1889 Psychiatric Hospital Visible from Interstate 80
831 Highway 150 South, Evanston, WY 82930
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No public access to operational areas. Tours of historic grounds may be requested by phone.
Access
Limited Access
Sloping campus on a hill above downtown Evanston
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1889 · Wyoming Territorial Asylum · William Dubois Architecture · National Register Historic District
The Wyoming Territorial Legislature authorized the Wyoming Insane Asylum in 1886, and the institution opened on May 15, 1889 in Evanston, in the southwestern corner of what would become the state of Wyoming the following year. The first patients were transported by Pullman car from Jacksonville, Illinois, where the Wyoming Territory had previously contracted for psychiatric care.
The campus expanded across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on a hill about a mile south of downtown Evanston. Cheyenne architect William Dubois designed many of the brick buildings that now form the historic district, including patient dormitories, staff housing, the cafeteria, and administrative structures. The original 1889 building burned in 1917 and was replaced.
The institution had a documented troubled history. Beginning in 1899, journalist E. T. Payton, a former patient, published allegations of patient beatings and squalid conditions, sustaining a public campaign for nearly two decades. Reform investigations and changes in administrative leadership followed across the early twentieth century. The hospital was renamed the Wyoming State Hospital and reorganized under modern psychiatric standards.
Fifteen contributing buildings of the historic campus are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, designed for therapeutic effect with a hilltop setting, a planted lawn shaded by cottonwoods, and a clear sight line to downtown Evanston. The hospital remains an operating psychiatric facility administered by the Wyoming Department of Health. Tours of the historic grounds may be requested by phone.
Sources
The most distinctive Wyoming State Hospital story is institutional rather than individual. Drivers on Interstate 80 east and west of Evanston reportedly placed repeated calls to local authorities, dispatching deputies who could find no person in distress. According to accounts published in WyoHistory.org and regional outlets, hospital staff hung a sheet across that single upper-floor window to interrupt the line of sight from the highway. The sheet has remained in place across multiple decades.
Accompanying reports from the historic campus include voices and figures briefly observed at upper-floor windows after sundown, lights apparent in sections of the older buildings that have been disconnected from power, howling or wailing sounds carried across the lawn, and at least one recurring account of a rocking chair observed in motion through a window of a vacant room. None of the accounts identify the historical individual associated with the window apparition by name; she is described in folklore as a young patient, though the hospital has not confirmed any such case.
These accounts circulate through regional paranormal media and through the Alliance for Historic Wyoming watch-list documentation. The hospital itself does not promote its haunted reputation and treats the historic-district status as the central public-facing identity. Visitors should respect the institution's active medical mission; the campus is not a tourist site and unscheduled access is not permitted.
Notable Entities
The historic Wyoming State Hospital cluster sits on a hill about a mile south of downtown Evanston and is visible from sections of Interstate 80. Tours of the grounds may be requested by calling the hospital directly. Public access to active areas is not permitted.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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