Dr. June Robertson McCarroll

• Posted July 5, 2023

Dr. June Robertson McCarroll was born June Adaline Whittlesey on June 30, 1867 in New York. She attended medical school in Chicago and started her own practice there following her graduation, a feat uncommon for women at the time. In 1896, she married her first husband, Timothy Preston Hill. In 1900, the couple separated, but an official divorce did not come about until 1915. She reportedly married her second husband, James R. Robertson, in 1900, however, due to the date of her divorce, it is probable that it was a common law marriage. June left her practice in 1904 to move to California for the sake of her husband's health, hoping that the dry air would help him overcome tuberculosis. They settled near Indio, a town in the Coachella Valley. With the climate proving helpful to her husband's recovery, McCarroll took a job as the local physician.

Traveling the entirety of the Coachella Valley (a distance of over 60 miles across) via automobile, horseback, and buggy, she didn't allow natural road blocks to stop her from getting patients the care they needed. For 9 years, Dr. June Robertson was the only full-time doctor practicing in the Coachella Valley, as well as the only doctor employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs working for the local Native American reservations in the Valley. During that time, she also opened the area's first library out of her home, which provided anywhere from 50 to 100 books for the enjoyment of the local population, including those she treated as patients. 

In 1914, June's husband's health took a turn for the worst and he died from his tuberculosis. In 1916, June married her third and final husband, a manager for the local branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, Frank Taylor McCarroll. It was around this time that she hung up her doctor's coat and began her involvement with multiple women's groups.

Up to this point, Dr. June Robertson McCarroll's life was full of various accomplishments, both in the medical and educational fields, however, the legacy for which she is remembered today is for an accomplishment in an entirely different sphere.

June's time as the Coachella Valley's only doctor meant she had to travel quite a bit. Automobile, buggy, and horseback trips took a sizable amount of time in her life. It was on one of these automobile trips that she would have an experience that would alter the lives of American drivers for years to come.

On one particular car ride in 1917, Dr. June was driving her car when a truck driving the opposite direction, taking up the majority of space on the narrow road, forced her to swerve her car into a nearby ditch. Looking back on the incident, she later said:

“It did not take me long to choose between a sandy berth to the right and a ten-ton truck to the left!” 

It was after this incident that McCarroll had an idea. She believed that a simple white line painted down the center of the road would solve the problem. Armed with her idea, she presented it to the local Board of Supervisors, who promptly rejected her proposal. Following their rejection of her idea, she decided to implement it herself, taking a paintbrush and painting the white line down the center of the highway. After painting the first acknowledged stripe in California history, she set off to start a campaign to convince the local Board of Supervisors. With the help of the various women's clubs in which she was involved, she began a letter-writing campaign all over the state of California. Her hard work proved successful and the idea was implemented by the California Highway Commission in 1924, with 3,500 miles worth of road painted with the white stripes. To acknowledge Dr. June's contributions to highway safety, the same stretch of road on which Dr. June had her life-changing encounter with a truck (Interstate 10), was dedicated to her, being dubbed "The Doctor June McCarroll Memorial Freeway."

June's efforts to change the roads of California cemented her legacy in history, however, many dispute as to whether or not she was the first to claim the idea of white painted lines on highways. It has since been proven that the idea was implemented by Edward N. Hines in Detroit in 1911 and Kenneth I. Sawyer in Michigan in the summer of 1917 (just months before Dr. June's truck incident). However, what sets Dr. June apart from her predecessors in the idea is her perseverance to get the idea turned into legislature. Her use of the letter writing campaign and her various appeals to have the law passed show her belief in her idea and how critical it was to get it passed.

Dr. June Robertson McCarroll's perseverance is shown in every aspect of her life. When asked to take the taxing job of delivering medical care to the whole of Coachella Valley, she volunteered to take the 60 mile trek if it meant getting medical care to those in need. While doing so, she also recognized her patients' intellectual needs and opened Coachella Valley's first library in her own home. Her care for the needs of others continued to show later on in her life when she recognized the need for better road safety in her town and took it upon her self to fix it when local legislature did not. Her efforts led to permanent change, both in California and the whole of America. While Dr. June Robertson McCarroll died in 1954, her legacy of change lives on today in the simple strip of paint that lines every highway in the country. 

Credit for the information in this post goes to:

Distance Between Palm Springs and Salton Sea. www.distancefromto.net/between/Palm+Springs/Salton+Sea.

Dr. June Robertson McCarroll Historical Marker. 1 July 2023, www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=78540.

June McCarroll Facts for Kids. kids.kiddle.co/June_McCarroll.

Niemann, Greg, and Greg Niemann. “CV History: Dr. June Robertson McCarroll Was the Valley’s First Woman Doctor—but She’s Best Known for a Transportation Innovation.” Coachella Valley Independent, Sept. 2021, cvindependent.com/2021/09/cv-history-dr-june-robertson-mccarroll-was-the-valleys-first-woman-doctor-but-shes-best-known-for-a-transportation-innovation.

Ugc. “Dr. June McCarroll Monument.” Atlas Obscura, 21 May 2023, www.atlasobscura.com/places/doctor-june-mccarroll-monument.