HEBRON – For a half century a cluster of buildings sprawled over the top of Greenwood Mountain was a place of both sickness and salvation. This was the Western Maine TB Sanatorium, designed to provide health and peace for sufferers of tuberculosis.

During those five decades, the 150 available beds were often filled as the scourge of TB brought sufferers from all over New England and the rest of the world.

The last patient left the sanitorium June 24, 1959. But the memories of the facility remain alive in the minds of people who worked there, were treated there or grew up within the sanatorium walls while family members suffered with the dreaded disease.

The Hebron sanatorium, though nothing more today than crumbled buildings overgrown with trees and weeds, is experiencing a strange revival.

Two years ago, a group of historians planned a gathering to share memories of the sanatorium. Through simple serendipity, the gathering coincided with a feature story about the facility that ran in the Sun Journal.

Organizers expected perhaps 20 participants. Instead, 80 people flocked to a Grange hall to talk about their experiences at the sanatorium. It became clear then that living links to the place were scattered all over.

“Many stories were shared,” said Bruce Conant, president of the Hebron Historical Society, “and people in photographs identified.”

Since then, a group of people began to work on a book about the sanatorium. It was to include an in-depth history of the facility, personal memories and photos. Lots of photos.

L. Bowman Sturtevant spent years researching the history of the sanatorium for the Hebron Historical Society. He interviewed former patients and staffed and organized gatherings where information and materials could be shared.

Suffering with cancer, Sturtevant continued working on the project until he died late last year. Friends and colleagues said he continued working even as he became bedridden.

“He was working on it right until the end,” Conant said. “He was a dedicated historian.”

Sturtevant died before seeing the completion of his work. But now, the years of his labor have been organized, printed and bound in a book called “Western Maine Sanatorium Revisited: 1901-1959.”

The volume is broken up into 10 chapters focusing on everything from old annual reports to the news coverage of the facility over the past 100 years.

It is also jammed full of photographs: severe looking men and women in suits staring out from the sanatorium grounds; men tending horses on the farm; children dressed in their Sunday best; nurses standing over hospital beds filled with patients; the buildings themselves, long and imposing.

“Nobody goes away from here without falling in love with it,” states an early account of the sanatorium grounds. “And nobody with any sense of feeling for his suffering fellow man can depart without an added sense of appreciation of the fact that the institution located here is worthy of its surrounding.”

On April 25, another gathering is planned. Members of the Historical Society will meet again, to present the book and hopefully, learn of others with connections to the sanatorium.

“The hope is to have audience participation, memories and stories of patients, relatives and former workers,” Conant said. “We plan to have a silent film from the 1930s depicting holiday parades at the (sanatorium) running before and/or after.”

The gathering at the Hebron Fire House gets underway at 6 p.m. with a supper. The presentation is planned for 7.