1904 – Dr. Robert S. Carroll establishes Dr. Carroll’s Sanitarium in Asheville, NC.

1905 – Nurses Training Program initiated.

1906 – Dr. Carroll’s Sanitarium is renamed Highland Hospital.

1936 – Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, wife of famed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, is admitted for treatment. Her stay at the hospital is intermittent until her death in 1948.

1938 – The hospital is donated to Duke University, but the public announcement of the gift is delayed until the 1939 centennial celebration of the founding of Brown’s Schoolhouse, a forebearer of Duke.

1940 – Dr. Richard S. Lyman accepts a position to head a new Department of Neuropsychiatry at Duke, which will administer operations at Highland Hospital and the Medical Center. A graduate of Yale and MIT, Lyman received an M.D. from John Hopkins and worked for a time under Ivan Pavlov. He was previously a professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Peking Union Medical College in China.

1940 – (November 29th) Official dedication of the Department of Neuropsychiatry.

1941 – As an outcome of wartime mobilization, the hospital’s undergraduate training school for nurses generated almost as much revenue as patient care.

1943 – Previous investments in extensive building renovations overseen by Dr. Carroll resulted in a period of economic hardship at Highland during the 1940s. Financial troubles persisted after the Duke Endowment rejected requests for reimbursement of charity cases.

1945 – Due to labor shortages and increasing wages during and after the war, a charter revision changes the composition of the hospital board with all members having stronger ties with Duke’s interests.

1947 – A Rockefeller Foundation grant expires on June 30th resulting in Duke fully assuming financial support of the Department of Psychiatry which was established in 1940. Dr. Carroll resigns as the hospital’s director in September. In a letter to Wilbur Davison, Dean of the Medical School, Dr. Lyman recommends that Highland Hospital be sold or that an investment of $150,000 be secured. Shortly after, Dr. Lyman takes a year’s leave of absence.

1948 – (March) After a series of fires in less than a year, nine women, including Zelda Fitzgerald, perish in a fire at Highland Hospital.

1948 – (December 20th) Dr. Charman Carroll, the adopted daughter of founder Dr. Robert Carroll, is appointed as the hospital’s new director. Dr. C. Carroll, a graduate of Duke, received her M.D. from the University of Colorado in 1939. She did her internship with Davison in the Department of Pediatrics before becoming Duke’s first resident in the Department of Neuropsychiatry in 1940.

1949 – Dr. Robert Carroll dies. Lawsuits are settled against Highland, a nonprofit corporation.

1951 – Dr. Lyman leaves Duke for a position with the Veterans Administration.

1963 – Dr. Charman Carroll dies. Administrative and staff problems follow.

1968 – Homewood School, a program for adolescent therapy, is expanded after Highland purchases Asheville Christian Academy with cash reserves. Initially, twenty-four students are served but that grows to 137 by 1972. Since most participants are referred by Asheville Public Schools, the program struggles due to funding,

1973 – A Half-Way House and a Day Patient Program are opened on the Highland campus.

1979 – Duke University sells its interest in Highland Hospital to Psychiatric Institutes of America, a for-profit entity.

1993 – Highland Hospital closes.