Pisgah Home Historic District

About this property

Pisgah Home Historic District is a historic district in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was the site of the Pisgah Home movement begun by faith healer and social reformer, Finis E. Yoakum, in the early 1900s. The site is closely aligned with the founding of the modern Pentecostal church. It has been a mission used for religious and charitable purposes for more than 100 years. The area today is operated as the Christ Faith Mission/Old Pisgah Home. Finis Yoakum (1851–1920), the founder of the Pisgah Home movement, began his career as a medical doctor specializing in mental and neurological disorders and serving as the chair of mental disease on the faculty of Gross Medical College in Denver, Colorado. In July 1894, Yoakum was badly injured when he was struck by a buggy. He moved to Los Angeles in 1895, hoping the mild climate would assist in his recuperation. After attending a Christian Alliance prayer meeting in 1895, Yoakum recovered and considered his healing to be a miracle. He later wrote that he received visions telling him to create a mission for the needy. Though he began his mission around 1900, he continued to have other business interests as well. One of those interests was gold mining. In 1897, the Los Angeles Times published an article on Yoakum's claim that he had discovered a new method of "X-Ray Prospecting" for gold. Yoakum reported that he had laid a bit of gold-bearing quartz on the x-ray plate while taking an x-ray of a patient with a tumor. The x-ray showed the location of the gold deposits in the quartz, and Yoakum proposed using x-rays in mine tunnels to "ascertain decisively if gold is present, and if so, exactly where it lies and in what quantities." Following this report, Yoakum became active in gold and copper mining. In 1902, he ran a newspaper advertisement (pictured at left) offering stock at 25 cents a share in his new mining company. Yoakum later claimed that it was while traveling in Mexico, the location of his mining interests, that he spoke for the first time in tongues. He reported: "I was in the heart of Mexico in a church, speaking through an interpreter to the Mexicans and Indians, when suddenly a distinct rush of some might wind came upon me, and when I opened my mouth it was not English, but a beautiful smooth Castilian language, and for 20 or 30 minutes I held that large audience." Around 1900, Yoakum formed an institution that was initially known as Yoakum's Sanatorium at his house in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles. The home originally had room for only eight persons and was founded "to give free care to drunkards and outcasts who wished to reform." In March 1903, the Los Angeles Times reported that Yoakum was building a cottage to the north of his "Faith home" and had plans for a series of cottages for the use of patients at his sanatorium. In June 1903, the Times reported that proposed additions to Yoakum's sanatorium would increase the capacity from 50 to 150 patients. Some patients stayed in the main home, others stayed in the cottages, and others still stayed in tents and wagons on the property.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Los Angeles County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Los Angeles County.

More historic places in California

Browse all historic places in California.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

California history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.