The Norconian Resort Supreme - Purchase By Navy

Purchase By Navy

In September–October 1941, the United States Navy purchased the resort, and on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the resort was commissioned the United States Naval Hospital in Corona (the hospital was actually in the town of Norco, but the post office was Corona-based, hence the name). Almost immediately, the Navy held up payment, and Rex Clark spent four long years in court fighting for the $2,000,000 promised by the federal government. He eventually won the suit, but it is unclear exactly what the amount of the judgment was.

The first patients arrived from the Pearl Harbor attack and were housed and treated in the luxurious rooms of the former resort. The facility was quickly altered and expanded to include isolation wards (the hospital was the designated national tubercular and malaria treatment center for the United States Navy as well as the Naval Pacific Coast Polio facility), a 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m2) ward addition (which was christened by Eleanor Roosevelt), a marvelous chapel, complete theater, gymnasium (where wheelchair basketball was born on the wheels of "The Rolling Devils"), a nurses quarters, corpsman quarters, etc. At the hospital's peak (1945) over 5000 patients were being treated. Many firsts occurred at the hospital; first use of penicillin for tubercular patients, first air transportation of Naval patients across the United States with final destination in Norco, first uses of polio vaccine outside of Pittsburgh, first hand-held X-ray machines, as well as advances in prosthetic devices and occupational therapy. Actress Kay Francis was in charge of hospital morale, and she saw to it that many of the stars who frequented the resort now entertained the patients; including The Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, Harry James, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Kay Kyser, James Cagney, Clark Gable and dozens of others.

The hospital closed temporarily in 1949 and re-opened in 1950 for the Korean War. During this brief closure the Naval Weapons Assessment Center was born and soon became one of the finest top-secret think tanks in the nation and a leader in the Cold War victory. The hospital closed for good in 1957, but the Naval Assessment Center remained. In 1962, 94 acres (38 ha) in the north were given to the state of California, and on that site was born the California Rehabilitation Center, the first state-funded addiction treatment program in the nation. This voluntary program (addicts had a choice of prison or CRC) moved into the old resort clubhouse, the northern wards, north wing, chapel, gymnasium, nurses quarters, etc. Unfortunately, there was a battle of attitudes; correction versus rehabilitation and corrections won. The prison quickly moved from low security to high medium and 5000 of the worst of the worst reside within truly historic walls.