HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Alameda County's tuberculosis sanitarium treated 10,000+ patients from 1918 to 1960; demolished buildings left foundations now beneath a youth camp, with ghost legends attached to the ruins.
5535 Arroyo Road, Livermore, CA 94550
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The Camp Arroyo property is a privately operated youth camp; the site is not open to the general public for tours. The surrounding East Bay Regional Park District land is publicly accessible.
Access
Limited Access
Unpaved rural terrain; remaining foundations and Camp Arroyo grounds are on private property
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1918 · Alameda County tuberculosis sanitarium 1918–1960 · Treated over 10,000 patients · Early example of public health infrastructure for infectious disease · Now Camp Arroyo youth camp site
Alameda County opened the Del Valle Preventorium on its Livermore hills acreage in 1918, responding to tuberculosis rates that made the disease a dominant public health threat in early 20th-century California. The initial campus accommodated 280 patients and expanded to 300. Alameda County assumed direct operational control in 1925, and Dr. Chessley Bush served as medical superintendent for more than 30 years beginning in 1919.
At its operational peak the campus occupied 160 acres and provided the full range of TB treatment available at the time — fresh air therapy, rest, nutritional support — on grounds designed to isolate patients from urban environments while providing humane care. The sanitarium treated more than 10,000 patients across its four-decade run.
The antibiotic streptomycin became the standard tuberculosis treatment in the late 1940s and early 1950s, collapsing the patient population that sanitarium care had been built to serve. By 1959 only 148 patients remained in residence. The facility closed in August 1960; the final 90 patients transferred to Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro.
The abandoned complex deteriorated through the 1960s and 1970s, drawing urban explorers and accumulating ghost legends. The Buenas Vidas Youth Ranch leased part of the grounds in 1976 and restored some structures. The East Bay Regional Park District acquired the property in 1989. During the 1990s the remaining sanitarium buildings were demolished to make way for Camp Arroyo, now a summer camp for chronically ill children. Structural foundations remain on the site. A 1973 horror film, Warlock Moon, was shot on the abandoned grounds before demolition.
Sources
The Arroyo del Valle Sanitarium's ghost reputation developed in the period between its 1960 closure and the 1990s demolition, when the buildings sat accessible and decaying in the Livermore hills. Explorers reported the standard phenomena associated with abandoned medical institutions: disembodied sounds, cold rooms, and an atmosphere of residual suffering that early investigators interpreted as paranormal.
The most persistent legend involves a groundskeeper who allegedly murdered patients in the children's ward before taking his own life. Local researchers and historians who have examined county records find no incident report supporting this story; it appears to be the kind of campfire legend that attaches itself to any abandoned building where death was a regular event. Camp Arroyo staff have acknowledged the story circulates among summer campers, occasionally contributing to nighttime anxiety, but treat it as folklore.
The foundations still visible on the grounds carry no verified paranormal documentation. What survives is the building's history: a county institution where tuberculosis patients spent months and years of their lives, many dying before the antibiotic era made the disease treatable. Whether that history produces atmospheric effects or merely imaginative projection is the kind of question the landscape now accommodates without resolving.
Media Appearances
The sanitarium buildings were demolished in the 1990s when Camp Arroyo was developed on the former 160-acre grounds. The site itself is now a youth camp and not open to the public. The surrounding East Bay Regional Park District land provides publicly accessible hiking near the site. Visible remnants include some structural foundations from the original sanitarium complex.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Fairfax, CA
Camp Bothin in Fairfax occupies the grounds of the former Arequipa Sanatorium, a tuberculosis treatment home for working-class women opened in 1911 by Dr. Philip King Brown. The property had earlier served as Henry E. Bothin's Hill Farm convalescent home for women and children. After Arequipa closed in the 1950s, the Girl Scouts took over the buildings, which they still use today.
San Luis Obispo, CA
Sunny Acres opened April 16, 1931, built on county grounds above Johnson Avenue as a home for orphans and children who were wards of the state. It later served as a TB clinic and juvenile detention facility before the Fire Marshal closed it in 1974 after decades of deteriorating conditions. The building sat abandoned for roughly 40 years before Transitions Mental Health Association renovated it as Bishop Street Studios, an affordable housing complex for residents with mental illness.
Napa, CA
Napa State Hospital opened in 1875 as the Napa Insane Asylum on land that was formerly part of a Mexican land grant. Patients who died at the facility from 1875 to 1924 — approximately 4,368 people — were buried in a field on the grounds without markers. An outbuilding and unused calf barn now sit atop part of the burial area. The California Memorial Project maintains a monument on the grounds, and visits require an appointment through the hospital executive office.