Osawatomie, Kansas: Mental Hospital Graveyard

Numbers rather than names mark hundreds of gravestones of patients who died at the now-closed state mental hospital.

Address:: Hwy 279, Osawatomie, KS
Directions:: Northeast of town. From US Hwy 169 exit onto Hwy 279/343rd St. Turn west. Drive a quarter-mile. You'll see a little pull-off for the cemetery on the right.

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Kansas State Hospital Cemetery

The Osawatomie State Hospital, which is its actual name, just celebrated 150 years of providing mental health care to the citizens of Kansas. The cemetery is as described. However, the hospital consists of many acres and many buildings, several of which are empty and deteriorating.

The building that can be seen best from the road is DeJong building. Many of it's windows are broken. The once-beautiful grape arbor in front of the building no longer has a roof. There are many places on the hospital grounds where patients have committed suicide over the 150 years.

While the hospital is still in use, funding and other governmental decisions have contributed mightily to its deterioration.

[Joyce, 01/31/2017]

Cemetery.

Kansas State Hospital Patient Cemetery

The Kansas State Hospital used to be known as the state insane asylum. The old building is vacant with many broken windows and maybe even a cemetery of deceased patients that we stumbled upon.

[Rose, 11/29/2016]

346 headstones are in the cemetery, which are easy to count because nearly all of them are inscribed with only big numbers, not names. Patients were buried in the cemetery from the 1860s to the 1950s.