Tubercular Cabin / Cave Creek Museum

The treatment of persons with tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases is of great significance to the Cave Creek area of Arizona, the State of Arizona, and the Southwest as a whole. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tuberculosis was incredibly widespread throughout the United States. The only known treatment for the ailment prior to the late 1940s was exposure to warm, light, dry, clean air. The climate of Arizona was ideal for these people, many of whom came to Arizona for treatment. In addition, many persons suffering from other respiratory problems such as asthma came to alleviate their conditions. Many of the ranchers, cowboys, miners, business people, and ladies of early Arizona migrated here because the climate was beneficial to their respiratory problems. Many regained their health and became the pioneers, leaders, and legends of the Southwest. 

Because it is highly contagious, tuberculosis patients were usually isolated from the rest of society in sanitariums. Beginning in the first decade of the 1990s when Arizona was still a territory, and until the 1940s there were many respiratory treatment facilities in Arizona. The first known facility in the Cave Creek area was established in 1907. It was a small tent structure at the “Howard Ranch”; however, the neighboring ranchers were very unhappy to have persons with a highly contagious communicable disease in their midst and the pop-up facility was soon closed.  

The first sanitariums in Arizona generally used tents to isolate their infectious patients. These tents were very hot in the summer, were without floors, which allowed easy access to scorpions, snakes, and other pests to venture inside, and lacked efficient ventilation which was essential to patient treatment. Soon, floors and windows were placed in tents and many styles of cottage or cabin evolved. The most common was the small, lightly constructed one room cabin approximately ten by twelve feet in dimension covered with canvas or wood. A number of these were often clustered around central sanitary and dining facilities.  

The Tubercular Cabin at the Cave Creek Museum is typical of the hundreds in use in the 1920s and 1930s and one of very few remaining. It was one of fourteen cabins clustered around a central dining area and sanitary facility which comprised the “Desmont Sanitarium” located near the present site of the “Le Sans Souci” restaurant on the south side of Cave Creek Road in the Town of Cave Creek, Arizona. The sanitarium was owned by Sam and Helen Jones, and operated from 1920 until 1929. Low occupancy brought about by the Great Depression forced the closure and subsequent sale. Exact ownership for a number of years is unknown, however the cabin was most likely used as housing for the transient workers employed in the construction of the Bartlett Dam on the nearby Verde River from 1930 until 1938. In the 1930s the cabin was moved to a site on the north side of Cave Creek Road near the location of what is now the Horny Toad Restaurant.  

In the late 1930s or early 1940s, the cabin was acquired by Ms. Dixie Nissan who used it as part of an “inn” and restaurant called “The Mustache Cup”. The cabin was reputed to have been used by prostitutes at the inn to entertain their clients. In 1945, Ms. Nissan granted the cabin to Mr. Santos Rubira, who used it as a residence and later a vacation cabin. In 1984, Mr. Rubira resold the land and donated this, the last remaining Tubercular Cabin in the area to the Cave Creek Museum for historic preservation. It has been preserved and displayed on the museum property since that time.  

Tubercular Cabin, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 21st 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75610230.

Museum Campus Exhibits, Camp Creek Museum. Accessed January 22nd 2021. https://cavecreekmuseum.org/museum-campus-exhibits/.