A pauper's cemetery with unmarked graves sits beneath a retail strip where 133 patients once burned in 1904.
3900 Durand Ave, Racine, WI 53405
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public park; adjacent retail parking lot is publicly accessible
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Wheelchair OK
Flat urban park with paved paths; retail parking area
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Photos OK
Est. 1889 · County psychiatric care history · 1904 asylum fire with 133 patients evacuated · Tuberculosis sanatorium era 1913–1962 · Pauper's burial ground with unmarked graves
The first insane patients were admitted to the Racine County poorhouse as early as 1855. The county board approved a dedicated building in November 1888, and the asylum admitted its first three patients on December 18, 1889. By 1904 the institution housed 133 patients.
On February 19, 1904, the building burned to the ground. Contemporary newspaper accounts from the Boston Evening Transcript and Providence News described the blaze; all patients were evacuated, though the facility was a total loss. The asylum was rebuilt quickly. A county poor home was added in 1918, and the Sunny Rest Tuberculosis Sanatorium operated on the grounds from approximately 1913 until the sanatorium era ended around 1962.
The facility operated under successive names — Gatliff Asylum (after early county pioneer Nelson Gatliff, 1813–1898), High Ridge Hospitals, and finally High Ridge Health Care Center of Racine County. It closed October 1, 1986, relocating its roughly 210 remaining residents to the new Ridgewood Health Care Center. Asbestos removal preceded demolition, which began in October 1988 and completed by early 1989. A retail center (High Ridge Centre) and Pritchard Park now occupy the site. The East Meadows section of Pritchard Park contains unmarked graves from the institution's pauper's burial ground that were never relocated.
Sources
The site's paranormal reputation centers on Pritchard Park's East Meadows, where institutional-era burials were never fully disinterred before the 1988 demolition. Multiple accounts describe a dark-eyed male apparition seen in the park after dark — standing near the tree line or crossing the grass before vanishing.
The Sunny Rest Tuberculosis Sanatorium component of the history adds another layer: patients who died of tuberculosis on the grounds were also interred in the pauper's section, their identities often unrecorded. The unconventionalhistorian.com site documents both the burial history and the paranormal accounts in detail, drawing on local archival research.
Walk the footprint of the Racine County Insane Asylum, demolished 1988–89, and locate the East Meadows section of Pritchard Park where unmarked graves from the institution's pauper's burial ground remain beneath the surface. Interpretive signage is limited; the site rewards visitors who research before arriving.
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