NEVADA STATE HOSPITAL CEMETERY PRESERVATION GROUP

If you drive north on Ash Street through Nevada, Missouri, you will come upon what was once the site of State Hospital #3, a massive self-sustaining complex that provided care for the mentally ill beginning in the 1800s. Past the brick buildings, you would find what looks like a large, fenced in, grassy field. This field, however, is not as empty as it looks; it is the Nevada State Hospital Cemetery, final resting place of over one thousand patients.

To an extent, death was an expected part of the institutional system. State mental hospitals were constructed for citizens with physical or neurological illnesses that often shortened life expectancy. Death from communicable illness was also common in these settings. Many of the hospital's patients were remanded to the custody of the state, leaving them without family or financial support in life and in death. This made the state responsible for their burial. This, along with issues with transportation of bodies, the stigma families felt due to having a relative in the hospital, and steep burial costs that families could not afford, led to the establishment of a cemetery on institutional property. In 1901, the mortality rate for patients was 6-7%, with the leading cause of death listed as "exhaustion"; expenditures for burial in this year included $210.00 for coffins, and $7.00 for digging graves.

Over the decades following, approaches to mental health care have changed for the better, and it has been over fifty years since the last patient was buried in the Nevada State Hospital Cemetery. The first efforts to reclaim the cemetery began in 1992, a year after Nevada State Hospital became Nevada Habilitation Center. The ground level stones in the cemetery had been placed without a base underneath to support them, and over the years had begun to sink underground. The names were also worn and sometimes illegible, making identifying the graves difficult. As Nevada Habilitation Center began transferring consumers out into Independent Supported Living homes in the community, taking the name Southwest Community Services, the funding and manpower to care for the cemetery became even harder to provide; the cemetery was mowed less regularly, and when it was mowed it was done so with heavy tractors that were hard on the stones, driving them even more deeply into the ground. As Southwest Community Services approached their move to a new building in December of 2014, meaning that no one would be around to care for the grounds any longer, concern for the future of the Nevada State Hospital Cemetery grew.

Volunteers formed the Nevada State Hospital Cemetery Preservation Group in order to make sure that those buried in this cemetery are not forgotten. Records have been transferred over to the computer in order to better identify graves, and to keep track of how many graves have been located, and how many are still missing. Until this, none of these records had been stored in digital form. Efforts have begun to provide a secure base under the headstones so that they will no longer sink under the ground. Volunteers do this difficult task by hand, using a shovel, water, and approximately three bags of quick setting cement per headstone. It is necessary to dig the headstone out of the ground, create a hole big enough to pour the cement into, and then place the stone back at ground level. The cost of materials to save one stone is $10 - not a large fee, until you consider the amount of graves that the group will be saving! 

Resetting these stones makes it easier for both historians and the living family members of those who have been buried in Nevada State Hospital Cemetery to locate these graves. If you are interested in assisting with these efforts, or would like to learn more about the Nevada State Hospital Cemetery, contact Linda Chesnut by email, or the telephone number listed in the contact section below on weekdays from 8:00am-4:30pm. Donations to save a stone can be made by mail or the Paypal button at the bottom of the page. Please help us save the stones, and keep the people who have been buried in this cemetery from being forgotten.