Shorter Insane Days

Posted: September 9, 2025 | Author: dana lange | Filed under: Uncategorized |Leave a comment

As the days in Maine are dwindling I am starting to get the Sunday scaries about going back to real life. I have had a wonderful month in Maine. I wish Russ had more free time, but as he says, “This is a great place to have to take calls from.”

As he had a full day of work I went out on a day’s adventure with my friend Warren. That means driving to hunt for antiques for him to sell at his shop in Camden. You know I am not a great shopper. I bore easily, but I do like the visits to new places. So we started he hunt very early at Miles, a barn out in the middle of nowhere, chocked full of stuff. Warren found many treasurers. I found none, but I tried.

Then we went through Augusta, the state capital on the way to the sweet town of Hallowell. I had never been there. It was a very cute town on the banks of the Kenebec River. We stopped there at a bakery Warren likes and he bought bread and I bought Russ a tiny blueberry pie. He deserved something for his day of working.

We perused our choices for lunch and picked the Quarry based on the fact that we could sit outside and look at the river and that at 11:45 there were plenty of people there, usually a good sign. Warren treated me to a very good kale salad which was so big I took half home and ate it for dinner.

We visited one more antique shop and I bought a glass jar for my Christmas decor. We also looked at a big church in town that was for sale, either $650,000 or $350,000 the online information was confusing. Warren thought I could make it the center of Mah Jongg training in Maine.

As I had enough shopping we started back for the coast. Warren wanted to show me the Maine Insane Asylum. So we drove up the road he thought it was on. When we got to a turn he said we must have missed it so we doubled back and found it nestled into a bunch of other state agency office.

The building, made of Hallowell Granite, was opened in 1840 and housed patients until 2004. Mainer Dorthea Dix was on original consultant for the Asylum. The same Dorthea Dix that the the North Carolina Mental hospital in Raleigh is named for.

It is a place that looks like horror movies were made there. According to a workman we met, the building is on the national register of historical sites, is full lead paint and asbestos. He said it would cost $25 Million to take the building down so they are currently closing it up and making it weather tight. Who knows what will come of it in the future.

The asylum is on the hill overlooking the Kenenbec river looking directly at the state house on the other side of the river. So the politicians can never forget those they serve. Or maybe it should scare politicians that we can send them there too.

Over 11,000 patients died living there and many were not properly buried. The place changed names over the years as the style of mental health changed, and the treatments changed. I watched a short documentary made by Ken Burns about the AMHI (Augusta mental Health Institute), as it came to be known and one nurse who worked there for 40 years described the era of drugs when patients who had been lost In their own worlds had awakenings.

At the height of enrollments there were over 1,800 patients which was about a third more than the place was able to hold. They lived in dormitory style rooms. You can only imagine.

The Asylum is on 600 acres that included a farm which the patients worked on in gardens and with Animals. It was probably the most therapeutic thing they could have done, but in the 70’s it was outlawed to have unpaid patient labor. They also started more community mental health services so the population went down to 300 of only the most serious patients. In 1988 five patients died from heat related illness due to the lack of climate control in the 1840 building. A new facility was eventually built right next to the old one and they moved in 2004, leaving the old building as a reminder. Pure One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

It seemed like the perfect ending to going to hunt for antiques to end learning all about a state asylum. Warren was happy I did not suggest leaving him there. I was happy that spending the day antiquing did not send me to the asylum.

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