Hello history enthusiasts! Here at the CSH Museum we are always updating and finding new treasures to display! Recently, the garage needed clearing out to make room for roof repairs. During this daunting task, an old cabinet was rediscovered! While inspecting and cleaning, it was discovered that the cabinet was used during autopsy procedures at the hospital! Our amazing college intern Autumn is getting the cabinet ready as I type, preparing it for you all! Until it is ready, a sneak peak of some findings are attached! We are looking forward to seeing everyone after the roof project is complete, and I will continue to update here on its progress!

A headrest used to stabilize the neck during autopsies, as well as a package of needles to be used post mortem to stitch the skin back together.

Hello history enthusiasts! I wanted to keep you all updated on happenings with our schedule. We have finally got a contractor set up to repair the roof on both the garage, and main house. We have a tentative starting date of October 21, 2024. This project should last about 4 weeks. If you are planning on visiting around this time, it is strongly encouraged to call the museum at 719-546-4004 to check if we are open the dates you are interested in. Additionally, October 1st and 8th the historian will be out of town. Feel free to email any research questions to steph.ann.miller39@gmail.com, and your message will be returned October 15th! Thank you all for your continued interest in our museum, we look forward to seeing you soon!

Hi, my name is Bethany Wood. I am one of the new volunteer tour guides for the Colorado State Mental Health Museum. I became a volunteer in August of 2024, and have loved every minute of it! The people here are very nice and there is always something new to learn! Recently, I’ve began studying Anthropology, so this is a great opportunity for me to get practical and hands on experience and knowledge!

Bethany is here on Tuesdays, and has quickly become very familiar with our exhibits! She has been a great asset and gives wonderful tours, come see her soon!

Hello history enthusiasts! My name is Stephanie Miller, and I am a volunteer here at the State Hospital Museum in Pueblo, Colorado! I’ve been helping out here since about March 2024, and have been enjoying myself completely. A little about myself, I am originally from Las Animas, Colorado, and feel like my love for psychiatric history, as well as the old buildings started here with spending time at Fort Lyon. The Fort was a VA hospital when I was younger, and I spent time there volunteering with 4-H groups or various clubs I participated in. While it eventually was made into a correctional facility with the Department of Corrections, I still loved seeing the old buildings and trees lining the road to the main facility. I moved to Pueblo in 2011, and began working in the psych field myself. I have had many positions and roles throughout the last 13 years, but have always been drawn back to this campus. I stopped one day to visit the museum, and a few days later had plans to volunteer! I now spend typically every Tuesday here in the Archives room, researching family members for those who have reached out for help. When I am not here or working my regular job, I love to spend time with my wife, 4 dogs, and 2 cats. (yes I have my very own zoo!) Stop in and say hi if you find yourself at the museum on a Tuesday! If you are interested in any information, reach out to me directly at steph.ann.miller39@gmail.com, or call the museum. Some helpful tips to have: a date the person may have been admitted, and county they would have been admitted from. I look forward to meeting you all!

Stephanie

We have a great volunteer who has been with us 5 months now, and she is a great asset to our staff! She is learning quickly and may take over this blog soon, as my time is so limited now.

She found a great HBO series concerned with the state hospital. HERE is the page on IMDB. You can watch the series on HBO Max.

Yesterday at the museum something happened that reminded me of why, as volunteers, we do the things we do. I have been working on the Museum image archive project a lot lately. We have a new 40 inch TV dedicated to slide shows of state hospital history.

A group of nursing students were brought in to see the museum. This happens often, with students from several area nursing programs.

One student came up to me and said, “You have a picture of my Grandpa here. Do you think I could get a copy of it?”

Turns out she just discovered it in our display about the hospital police. After she pointed out the image to me, I told her I had recently done a quality scan of that image, and I was quite familiar with it:

I have emailed her a copy of it. That image is one of many taken by John Suhay when he did an extensive group of photographs of the state hospital in the fall of 1976. I came across three binders of his negatives at the Pueblo County Historical Society (my other volunteering gig), and have been scanning them for inclusion in our museum slide shows.

I came home from the museum yesterday feeling quite motivated.

Thanks to Judy McGinnis for helping us redesign our official museum brochure!

You can download the brochure HERE:

Also thanks to Ray at My Friend The Printer for the speedy printing job on our first order of 300. They look great:

I’ve been spending some time now and then on trying to solve the mystery of the Colorado State Hospital cemeteries.

Some research does best if you give it a lot of time. On this topic I want to take my time and let it organize itself in my brain (during a good night’s sleep, usually). When I get more of a handle on this I’ll probably write it all out, either in a Pueblo LORE article, or in a book–or both.

Cemetery #1 was not the cemetery they excavated in the 1990s and 2000s. That was cemetery #2.

Cemetery #1 was left alone. It’s exact location is really unknown, but it was known to be near the power plant of the state hospital. They did, however, create a little monument for it. A while ago Nancy Hall and I ventured out to find it (Nell had pictures of it in the archives, but we wanted to see it in person).

Here it is. I took these pictures of it on a beautiful Summer day:

And here’s a closeup:

The location on Google Maps is HERE.

NOTE: I should be posting on here more often, as it has been quite busy at the Museum this Summer. Of course, that’s also sort of an excuse as to why I haven’t been posting that much. But we have a new volunteer (Barbara), who is awesome, a new intern (Olivia) who is awesome, and we have collectively done a lot of work, along with Nancy, making improvements to the museum, which was already a hidden treasure.

We know have three to five short videos easily shown to museum patrons. These range from a short documentary on the state hospital dairy farm to short documentaries that allow the viewer to see the hospital in 1964–complete with footage of patients and staff members in the first few years after decentralization. This was a time when mental health practices were changing at an almost alarming rate.

Barbara is a great addition to our team, having worked in the mental health field. She has been helping me to understand the big picture on subjects like what occurred around the time of decentralization.

I’m still surprised Barbara didn’t get my reference to The Night of the Living Dead….