"The Livermore Sanitarium was started in 1893 by Dr. John W. Robertson for the treatment of nervous and general diseases. Since 1894, however, it has been practically devoted to the treatment of mental diseases.
In 1912 Dr. V. H. Podstata, formerly superintendant of Elgin State Hospital, Illinois, and Dr. Willhite of Dunning, Chicago, became interested in the institution, since when it has been conducted under the joint names of Drs. Robertson, Podstata and Willhite.
There are no large buildings, but many isolated cottages, some for single individuals, and all without either window guards or enclosed restraints. All patients receive individual nursing and care.
The general hydropathic building was completed in 1906 and occupies grounds entirely separate from the cottages."
From: Insitutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada, 1916, Volume 2, p. 59. Photo from Oakland: Athens of the Pacific, 1897, p. 38.
"We stopped for a night at the hospitable mansion of Mr. Yount. This old man had led an adventurous and chequered life, in the course of which he had fought under Jackson at New Orleans, and in the Seminole war, had been taken prisoner by the Indians, and actually bound to the stake. He had been a hunter and trapper, and Indian fighter at large, in the heart of the continent, until his combative propensities were gratified--and he finally found himself one day at the "jumping-off place," and made his first attempt at ocean navigation on the bosom of the broad Pacific. In the unpretending skiff of an otter-hunter, often unaccompanied save by his trusty rifle, he coasted the shores and islands of California, in search of the pelt of his valuable prey.