Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center

The Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center is a rehabilitation hospital located in Greenfield, New Hampshire, United States.

The Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center began operation in 1953. It was established by Harry Gregg of Nashua, the father of New Hampshire governor Hugh Gregg and grandfather of future U.S. senator Judd Gregg. The creation of the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center was the culmination of a prolonged effort undertaken by Harry Gregg and others to build a center for rehabilitation for children.

The story began around 1920 when Harry met Ezra A. Jones, MD, who was the first orthopedic specialist in New Hampshire. Orthopedics as a medical discipline arose from the challenge of dealing with unprecedented numbers of wounds and disabilities caused by the Great War, the "war to end all wars". Jones offered clinics in the major cities of the state. Jones met Gregg through the clinic established in Nashua.

In 1936 Harry Gregg and Ezra Jones were instrumental in the founding of the New Hampshire Society for Crippled Children. Funded primarily by the Easter Seals drive, the Society publicized the need for more extensive treatment programs for disabled people, lobbied for favorable legislation and carried on the clinics around the state. The Society made small grants to support the medical and rehabilitation needs of children and adults.

Several years after the establishment of the Society, Dr. Jones confided to Harry Gregg that his greatest wish was that New Hampshire would have a hospital where the patients with crippling diseases could come for sustained treatment and therapy under the most up-to-date conditions. This vision melded with one of Gregg's to build a "crippled children's camp" in Greenfield, New Hampshire. Gregg chose Greenfield because he had founded a summer camp for poor children from Nashua on the north shore of Sunset Lake, a small water body in Greenfield. Harry's sons had helped with the construction and operation of the camp. The camp was called the Nashua Fresh Air camp, and it eventually served more than 350 children each summer in two-week sessions before it closed in the 1970s. Through his experience with the camp Harry had learned of a large parcel of level land on a shoulder of Crotched Mountain, the Russell Dairy Farm. In the fall of 1942, the Society for Crippled Children authorized an expenditure of up to $7,500 to purchase the land at Crotched Mountain for the site of a "crippled children's camp". A little more than two months later, Gregg reported to the Society's Executive Committee that he had completed the purchase using funds from two bequests.

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