Save Copper Basin Medical Center!!

Please help save our local area hospital!!! We have had to suspend inpatient operations; we hope for a few short months, in order to obtain working capital (cash). The next 45 days will be our most critical period for survival of Copper Basin Medical Center. We have endured needed staff reductions and are critically short on supplies.

Copper Basin Medical Center is the only hospital located in Polk County Tennessee!! Without the help of our community we will not be able to survive! We are asking for any donations that the community, or anyone willing to donate to a valuable cause can make! Your donations can be made anonymously to the hospital or here via gofundme! Anything, anyone can contribute will be greatly appreciated! The hospital has fallen on hard times and in the ever competitive world of health care it is becoming increasingly harder for the smaller hospitals to compete effectively and efficiently! We are trying to remain a respectable facility and uphold ourselves to the highest standards of care to provide the best patient care possible! Help us provide that for your family members!! We even serve visitors who vacation to our area and partake in our beautiful mountain scenery and Ocoee & Hiawassee River adventures. We are the closest medical facility to these recreational areas and often provide lifesaving support in times of need.

Copper Basin Medical Center is a small, rural, critical access hospital nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Secluded from larger, additional medical facilities; Copper Basin Medical Center provides in state medical care to the people in the Ducktown, Copperhill, Turtletown, Farner, Coker Creek, and surrounding communities of the Eastern Polk County Region of Tennessee. Copper Basin Medical Center is located in Ducktown Tennessee, 6.5 miles from the 1996 Olympic Ocoee Whitewater Center on the Ocoee River.

Ducktown is a broad valley located in the southern Appalachian Mountains near the intersection of Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. Ducktown Tennessee is located in the Copper Basin and was originally the Cherokee Indian village of Kawana which means "duck town" in English, and was named after a Cherokee a leader named Chief Duck. The village's name first appears on Cherokee annuity distribution rolls as "Ducktown" in 1799.  The first shipment of copper ore was taken out on mule back in 1847. More than 30 mining companies were incorporated between 1852 and 1855 to mine copper at Ducktown. Mining ceased when Union troops destroyed the copper refinery and mill at Cleveland Tennessee in 1863. Mining resumed in 1866, and continued until 1878, when the mines had exhausted the shallow high-grade copper ores. By 1906, the Tennessee Copper Company had begun constructing and acid reclamation plant near Copperhill, Tennessee to recover most of the sulfur in the form of sulfuric acid rather than releasing it in to the atmosphere.