The history of the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation is about much more than just President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The history predates FDR, to the Native Americans who first utilized the healing properties of the warm springs, to the pre-Civil War and later Victorian resort era of the late 1800s. However, it was FDR who clearly made the greatest impact. Since FDR's first visit to Warm Springs in 1924 until his death in 1945, he made 41 visits here, and was the driving force for the treatment of polio, polio research and rehabilitation in general; and it was during that time FDR initiated The March of Dimes. Since his passing in 1945, the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation has continued his living legacy, and is now a National Historic Landmark.

According to local legend, the warm springs were a safe haven for warring tribes of Native Americans, who would bring their injured to the bubbling waters at the foot of Pine Mountain to recuperate. It is believed that the Creek (also called Muskogee), Chickasaw and even the southernmost Cherokee tribes were given safe passage to and from the 88 degree mineral water. In the mid 1800s, water spas dotted the southern landscape. Well-to-do property owners and businessmen would get away during the hot summer months. Among these was a hotel near the warm springs at Pine Mountain, where even influential visitors like Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina were known to have visited. In 1879, a much larger 180-room Victorian lodge was built on property overlooking the warm springs near the small town of Bullochville (which was later named Warm Springs by FDR). Located in Meriwether County, this rambling, multi-porch lodge was called the Meriwether Inn with trails and steps leading down to the springs and what eventually became a large outdoor swimming pool. With access by train and stagecoach, the Meriwether Inn remained a popular resort until George Foster Peabody, a prominent businessman and philanthropist in New York City purchased the property in 1923. In 1927 George Peabody sold the property and 1,200 acres to FDR for $200,000. Roosevelt, who refused to stay in the Inn due to its inaccessibility, turned the place into a polio treatment center, officially incorporated on July 28, 1927.

Named "the foremost statesman and political leader" of the 20th Century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is best known for being the only U.S. president elected four times, who guided the country out of the Great Depression and through World War II. An aristocrat from Hyde Park, N.Y., he had been both Assistant Secretary of the Navy and a candidate for Vice President by the time he contracted polio in 1921 at his family's summer home off the coast of Maine (Campobello). Paralyzed from the waist down at the age of 39, he spent the next three years searching for any means possible to walk again without success. Frustrated, and with his promising political future all but over, he received a letter from his New York friend, George Foster Peabody, who told him of remarkable improvements a young man with polio had made by swimming in the warm springs at his Georgia resort. FDR first came by milk train from Columbus, Georgia to the Meriwether Inn in October 1924. Soon the success he enjoyed in the warm springs, being able to stand on his own and strengthened leg and hip muscles, attracted local and national publicity. Soon other polio survivors began arriving from all over. FDR loved Warm Springs and in 1927 he purchased the resort with two-thirds of his personal fortune and it became The Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. With new confidence and a new appreciation for the problems of others (including his poor Georgia neighbors of the 1920s) he reentered politics and successfully ran for Governor of New York in 1928. Then just four years later, with America in the midst of its worst financial condition ever, FDR was elected President of the United States by a landslide victory, and went on to be elected three more times before dying in office at the Little White House in Warm Springs on April 12, 1945. Fittingly, the cure for polio was officially announced exactly 10 years to the day after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died.

The Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, known as The Georgia Warm Springs Foundation during FDR's life, quickly became an international polio treatment facility. Typically there were 150 patients being treated with Hydro Therapy and Physical Therapy conducted in the warm springs water. Gradually, the campus grew from a "colony" of cottages, formerly family summer homes, to an impressive quadrangle of modern, colonial style brick buildings. Designed by noted architect Henry Toombs, the new facility took on the appearance of a college campus, patterned after the University of Virginia. Between 1928 and 1954 many buildings were constructed, including Wilson Infirmary, Georgia Hall, Roosevelt Memorial Chapel, an indoor Campus Pool, Kress Hall, Builders Hall, a Brace Shop, a Schoolhouse and Roosevelt Hall, all with interconnecting walkways making access possible for people in wheelchairs. It was a caring community of patients and staff, all bonded by what Roosevelt termed "the Spirit of Warm Springs." Among the more prominent staff were Helena Mahoney, the first physical therapist; Dr. Leroy Hubbard, the first fulltime physician; Fred Botts, one of the earliest patients who later became the Foundation's first director of admissions; Alice Plastridge, the therapist credited with helping FDR regain his ability to walk with assistance; doctors Robert Bennett, C. E. Irwin and Hal Raper; and Basil O'Connor, Roosevelt's law partner and original chairman of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (polio), who also became the first president of the March of Dimes after FDR's death.

With release of Salk vaccine in 1954, the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation began to change. Fewer and fewer new cases of polio were reported in the U.S. and abroad, and gradually the facility began to focus on rehabilitation for all types of disabilities. Eventually, the Foundation donated land for an adjacent, state-managed vocational rehabilitation complex known as the Georgia Rehabilitation Center, which opened in 1964. And then in 1974, the Foundation turned over the remaining hospital and property to the State of Georgia, which placed it under the direction of the Division of Rehabilitation Services and the Department of Human Resources. Finally, in 1980, the medical and vocational programs were merged as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation and the campus was designated as a National Historic Landmark District. New services were developed for the treatment of brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, strokes, amputations. Likewise, new services were developed regarding employment of persons with disabilities and services for special populations such as the blind. In 2002, the State of Georgia officially moved the Division of Rehabilitation Services, including the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, under the Georgia Department of Labor. Today, the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation is one of only eight state operated comprehensive rehabilitation centers in the United States.