Veterans Administration Medical Center

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Now known as the Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System of the Department of Veterans affairs, West Los Angeles Campus.
Veterans’ homes for medical care were first established in 1812 with the Naval Home in
Philadelphia, followed by the Soldiers’ Home and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (both in Washington D.C.) in 1853 and 1855, respectively. In 1866 Congress established the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, which initially provided mostly domiciliary services, plus incidentalmedical care, for disabled and indigent (Union) veterans. The quality of medical care available at these homes gradually rose until it was comparable to the level of hospital care of the day. The National Cemetery System was established in 1862, to provide burial for the Union war dead. In 1873 the scope of the National Cemetery System was enlarged to provide for burial for all
honorably discharged (Union) veterans.
In 1921 the Veterans Bureau was established as an independent agency to consolidate all benefits for World War I veterans (life insurance, disability and death compensation, vocational rehabilitation, medical care) under one agency.
The Veterans Administration (VA) was established in 1930, merging the Veterans Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions, and the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and finally bringing all veterans’ benefits programs under the jurisdiction of a single agency (except for the National Cemetery System, which remained under the jurisdiction of the War Department).

The Soldiers Home and Veterans Park (at Sawtelle, California) in 1888.
Col. Robert S. Baker and Senator John Paul Jones purchased property from the Sepulveda family and in 1887 Jones and Baker won the right to donate 600 acres of land to the Federal Government for the Pacific Branch of the National Soldiers' Home of Disabled Veterans from the Civil War.
Two thirds of the land was from the purchase of Sepulveda's Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica. (One-third was from the San José de Buenos Aires property. and so the property straddled Sepulveda Boulevard.) The establishment of the Soldiers' Home ment that they needed for a town to be near it for those who worked at the home. A little town was created in 1895 just south of the main gate of the Home on Ohio Avenue.