State Hospital North Cemetery

View of Cemetery from top of hill, March 2018: Photo, MLB

Directions to this cemetery: From highway #12, cross the bridge over the Clearwater River towards Orofino; take the first left from the bridge and proceed about one mile to Hospital Drive. There is a sign by the road that says "State Hospital North". Turn right onto Hospital Drive and then above a small housing project, take the right hand road. The road will curve right above a maintenance shed and then left and bring you to the main entrance of the hospital. At the entrance to the parking lot you will proceed straight and then veer right. This road will go past several maintenance sheds and then go right and go uphill past an old trailer court with terraces and concrete foundations still visible on the left. From the hospital parking lot you will go about .4 of a mile to the end of this little paved road and the end of the old trailer court. To the right, the road turns into dirt and is gated. The cemetery is on the left and uphill from the old trailer court terraces. The metal fence posts are still easy to see. The address is 300 Hospital Drive, Orofino, Idaho but you will need the directions above to get to the cemetery.

Authorized by state legislature in 1905, Northern Idaho Sanitarium & Insane Asylum accepted its first patients by the fall of that year. The first superintendent was Dr. John Givens, transferred from the Southern Idaho State Hospital at Blackfoot. Initially there were only twenty patients and five staff. At first the patients were kept in a "tent city" until the main building was finished in 1906. Due to it's location, most patients had to be brought in by train. The hospital had a strict military routine including inspections and marching daily. By 1931 the name of the hospital was changed to State Hospital North. The military routine had been replaced by other activities as a form of treatment. 1949 came with overcrowding for the one building, almost 600 patients in a building meant for only 450. That same year the state passed reform for the overcrowding and several smaller cottages were built. In 1954 the population had been reduced to 488. Two years later the patient work week was greatly reduced.

With a further drop in patient numbers, the hospital reported only 80 beds in 1971. The following year the hospital started the Alcohol Treatment Unit followed by a juvenile diagnostic unit in 1978. Today the hospital handles mainly court-committed patients. In 2000 the old hospital building was torn down and the present, modern structure built.

SHN hospital was officially opened for use in 1905 but it wasn't required to have state death certificates until 1911. Burials listed here have had their dates confirmed by research into Idaho state death records, historical records, Ancestry.com and family trees. The youngest recorded person buried here is Infant Dean, stillborn daughter of John & Cora (Price) Dean, who born April 14, 1912. The oldest was Dominick Robbins, 93 years old, in 1931. This cemetery is no longer in use.

The first burial was of John Gulstrom who passed away June 26, 1906. His stone has the number one stamped on it, which is correct. It is the only stone with a number. The last burial was of Simon Sanders who passed away April 4, 1950.

Legend of this cemetery is that on several occasions inmates kept the lawn mown and maintained. Several times some of the metal markers were moved because "they were in the way" or "they looked better this way". So, while the records are as accurate as we can possibly make them, the location of some of the metal markers may not be precise.

SHN cemetery has about 20 rows with from 19 to 36 graves in each one. The cemetery is smaller at the bottom and widens going uphill, so there was room for more than 600 people and there are records of 610 burials. There are countless funeral home metal markers with no names or dates, that information being obliterated by time and weather. These burials will be documented at a later date. In further research it was found that there was a chronological order to the concrete grave stones. This helped greatly in determining death dates. These stones were made by patients at the hospital and sometimes the spelling leaves a little to be desired, but we could find who they belonged to. In February 2016 two metal markers were found that the names and dates could still be read.

SHN cemetery was originally transcribed for Find A Grave in 2013 by Natalie Huntley. Natalie included many photos of graves and death certificates. Names, dates and notes shown in the table below reflect hundreds of hours of additional research by Michal Beck found in photos, death certificates, local books, and newspapers, Ancestry.com, the LDS Church Records and oral histories. They also include research into state, county and family histories. Along with normal information, also included are sex and the person s address where they came from upon admission to the hospital, if known. Some family information is mentioned under "notes". Michal Beck has created a "family tree" for people buried in this cemetery. It is Orofino State Hospital Cemetery Families on Ancestry.com. This tree was created to help connect those buried here with other family members if possible. For more information contact Michal Berreth-Beck at (208-464-2489) or email to fordscreekresearch@yahoo.com.

[ Return to Home Page ]

Cemetery Listings

If name or date is underlined it is a link to a photo of either the grave marker or a death certificate.
Click on the link to open it, then click on the "back" or "return" button to come back to this page.