Wagon Train on Oregon Trail

Oregon’s settlers initially put the care of the insane up for bid, with the lowest bidder winning the job (as had been the practice much earlier in New England). Eventually, Oregonians petitioned their government for an insane asylum at at time when the territory’s population was only about 14,000. Of that number, approximately five were insane and four were “idiots” requiring care. Perhaps the territory’s citizens felt that some sort of cachet of civilization surrounded such an advanced (for the time) institution.

Dr. James C. Hawthore, co-founder of the Oregon Hospital for the Insane, courtesy Oregon State Hospital Collections

Though the petition was forwarded in 1853, an asylum was not built until 1862; by this time, the guardianship system was failing. (The state still had only 23 insane and 14 idiotic persons that might need institutional care.) Advocates for the asylum, mostly transplants from Eastern states, were comfortable with the asylum system and believed strongly in its usefulness to cure the mentally ill. This belief was somewhat justified, since the overcrowding that eventually changed asylums into custodial institutions had not yet occurred to any great extent.

Though it may have been admirable for Oregonians to consider the needs of the mentally ill so early on, their desire for an asylum seems somewhat premature. However, the Oregon Hospital for the Insane in Portland opened as a private hospital in a temporary building in 1861 and moved to a permanent structure in 1862.