Climate as a resource, disease as a device: the failure of public tuberculosis sanatoria in Colorado

Colorado was one of the few states to never create a state-funded tuberculosis (TB) sanatorium despite having among the highest TB mortality and incidence rates in the nation in the first decades of the 20th century. This thesis explores two proposals for public sanatoria in Colorado: a municipal sanatorium in Denver in 1919, and a state sanatorium between 1931 and 1935. Both proposals failed. The prevailing ideology of environmental exceptionalism allowed government officials and residents alike to show disinterest in a public health response. The widespread belief that Colorado’s climate was inherently curative attracted hundreds of thousands of consumptives to the state. Resultantly, residents and government officials attempted to reconcile paradoxical interests in promoting growth and preserving Colorado’s image of health. These conflicting goals ultimately justified and sustained government inaction during the state’s most significant contagious disease crisis to date