Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health

The Museum of Mental Health By Katr67 via Wikimedia Commons

Of course there was an insane asylum baseball team heyyouoverthere (Atlas Obscura User)

The standard blurb heyyouoverthere (Atlas Obscura User)

The receiving ward of Oregon State Hospital By Wistungsten via Wikimedia Commons

Lobotomy table Photo by Ron Cooper (Used with permission of the Museum)

Doctor’s roll-top desk is stuffed full of interesting artifacts Photo by Ron Cooper (Used with permission of the Museum)

Interesting statistics heyyouoverthere (Atlas Obscura User)

The hospital grounds are populated with an amazing variety of trees. eo (Atlas Obscura User)

Fallout shelter Photo by Ron Cooper (Used with permission of the Museum)

Patient room Photo by Ron Cooper (Used with permission of the Museum)

A columbarium containing the unclaimed ashes of people who passed away in state institutions between 1913 and 1971. eo (Atlas Obscura User)

Entrance to the museum eo (Atlas Obscura User)

The metal urns patients ashes were originally stored in. These urns were discovered in 2004. eo (Atlas Obscura User)

The Oregon State hospital has many claims to fame, but its most interesting one could be a museum dedicated to mental health.

The museum is brimming with odd artifacts, strange outdated machines, and historical mementos left behind by those who lived and worked in the state hospital over the last 130 years. These exhibits reveal the history of the hospital using both the echoes of the mentally ill and the often inhumane methods that were used to treat them.

The hospital was built in 1883 and has been used to house those with persistent mental health problems ever since. It has been estimated that roughly two thirds of the patients who have lived there over the last century were found guilty of crimes and were also found to be insane. Others were presumably a threat to themselves or to others and all were locked into the asylum for varying lengths of time. The museum has collected everything to do with mental health—from patients’ possessions and straitjackets to antique medicines and outdated treatment devices—even housing a suppository machine that was patented in 1924 by a man appropriately named Applebum.

The non-profit Museum of Mental Health is located in the oldest building of the asylum that is is still standing. It has permanent exhibitions that chronicle the hospital’s history as well as rotating shows. It showcases pieces of unidentified equipment in an attempt to figure out their uses as well as those that are known parts of its legacy. A recent acquisition is a newly restored vintage television that was part of a famous baseball scene in the Academy Award-winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which was filmed at the hospital. One of the most-visited rooms in the museum is a permanent exhibit commemorating the film.