Est. 1942 · World War II Military Hospital · Named for Pearl Harbor KIA Lt. William Rhinehart Schick · Treated Battle Casualties from Midwestern Soldiers
Construction of Schick General Hospital began in 1942 on a 150-acre site at what is now 2604 N 4th Street in northern Clinton, Iowa. The facility was named for First Lieutenant William Rhinehart Schick, the first U.S. Army Medical Corps officer killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Schick was stationed at Hickam Field, Hawaii, when he was fatally wounded during the attack.
At peak operation, according to the Clinton Herald, the hospital admitted patients from across the Midwest and processed approximately 1,600 battle casualties per week. The scale of the facility — 150 acres of wards, administrative buildings, and support structures — made it one of the larger Army general hospitals in the region. Patients arrived from campaigns in Europe and the Pacific.
The hospital closed in 1946 following the end of World War II. The site subsequently became home to a Job Corps training center, which operated there for several decades before the grounds were redeveloped as Miller Ridge Apartments, the residential complex that now occupies the property. The institutional buildings have been demolished; the address remains but none of the original hospital structures are publicly visible.
Sources
- https://www.clintonherald.com/d-day-schick-hospital-brought-in-patients-from-around-the-world/article_7ec547b9-a1f5-58fc-aacc-d2dd3b7fd32e.html
- https://www.iowabets.com/info/iowa-haunted-cities
- https://103wjod.com/ixp/682/p/these-are-the-iowa-cities-where-you-will-most-likely-see-a-ghost/
High concentration of city-wide paranormal reportsSite cited as primary anchor for Clinton's haunted city reputation
Clinton has been repeatedly cited in Iowa paranormal tracking as the state city with the most ghost sightings per capita, and the former Schick General Hospital grounds are the location most commonly invoked to explain why. The combination of scale — 150 acres, thousands of patients, years of wartime deaths — and the subsequent erasure of the physical structures has contributed to the site's reputation.
No specific paranormal incidents at the Miller Ridge Apartments that now occupy the site have been documented in the public record with identifiable witnesses or dates. The dark tourism interest here is primarily historical: a massive military hospital, named for the first Army Medical Corps officer killed at Pearl Harbor, that treated an extraordinary volume of casualties from American families across the Midwest and then disappeared from the landscape without public memorial.
Clinton's broader paranormal reputation as Iowa's most ghost-sighted city has been reported by regional radio outlets and travel sites. Schick Hospital is the most historically significant site attached to that designation.
Notable Entities
Lt. William Rhinehart Schick (hospital namesake; KIA Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941)