The Asylum on the Hill—Northern State Hospital’s Business of Care
The road winds through thick evergreens, past chain-link fences that have lost their battle against rust.
Then, there it is—an entire campus of red-roofed buildings, their stucco walls fading under years of Pacific Northwest rain.
From a distance, Northern State Hospital still looks like a working institution. Up close, the cracks show.
Northern State opened in 1912, its creation fueled by Washington’s overcrowded mental hospitals.
Western State Hospital in Steilacoom was beyond capacity, pushing state officials to approve a second facility in Sedro-Woolley.
The location was practical—isolated but accessible, surrounded by farmland that could sustain patients and keep operational costs low.
The state handed the project to Seattle-based architects Saunders and Lawton, who designed the main buildings in the Spanish Colonial Revival style.
The Olmsted Brothers, the same landscape firm behind New York’s Central Park, mapped out the hospital grounds.
Northern State wasn’t a single structure but a network of facilities spread over several hundred acres.
Wards, staff quarters, and a full-scale farming operation were part of the model.
By 1915, the hospital was fully functional and was taking in patients from Skagit, King, Snohomish, and five other counties.
The first 100 men transferred from Western State helped complete construction, their labor shaping the very buildings that would confine them.
Over time, the facility grew into something larger than a hospital. It was a machine—built to heal and to hold. Even now, long after its doors closed, the land still carries its history.
For visitors searching for things to do in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, the remains of Northern State stand as a stark reminder of an industry that once thrived in isolation.
Expansion and Operations—Northern State’s Growth Strategy
In the years after its 1912 opening, Northern State Hospital wasn’t just a medical facility—it was an operation.
The land stretched across more than 1,200 acres, housing not only patients but also livestock, crop fields, and industrial buildings.
It ran like a company town, except the workers weren’t employees.
By 1915, construction projects were constant. New buildings went up—receiving halls, dormitories, and treatment centers.
The state legislature approved funding to allow direct patient intake rather than just transfers from Western State.
That decision changed everything. More admissions meant higher budgets. By 1917, Northern State had 750 patients and ten standing structures.
Another expansion in 1919—delayed by World War I—added a power plant, male and female wards, and more storage for hospital-run agriculture.
Farming and trade were the backbone of the Northern State’s economy. The hospital produced its own milk, eggs, and vegetables.
Patients worked in fields, tended livestock, and maintained machinery. To support the growing demand, a cow barn, horse barn, and hay barn were added.
By 1922, the population exceeded 1,000, with 49 additional beds added to a new male ward.
The facility wasn’t just expanding—it was adapting to the rising need for space and labor.
Doctors prescribed occupational therapy, but the line between treatment and forced labor blurred.
The hospital functioned with a 1:16 attendant-to-patient ratio, meaning much of the work fell on those admitted.
The idea was simple: if patients could contribute, they would. It kept costs down and gave Northern State financial leverage when requesting state funding.
The more self-sustaining it appeared, the more viable its business model became.
For decades, the hospital operated at full capacity. Administrators managed admissions, expenses, and logistics like any other large-scale enterprise.
It was structured, profitable, and efficient. But efficiency doesn’t mean humane, and cracks in the system would soon become impossible to ignore.
Scandals and Setbacks—Northern State’s Legal and Ethical Battles
Northern State Hospital ran on order, but control only went so far. Behind its white stucco walls, there were things the administration didn’t want outsiders to see.
Accusations surfaced. Reports were dismissed. But the stories never stopped.
The first major scandal hit in 1921. An attendant, James S. Hulen, was murdered inside the facility.
His killer, a patient, used a stolen razor. Just weeks later, a hospital cook named Paul Staudte was fired after refusing to serve spoiled food.
He went public with claims that the institution underfed patients, some surviving on little more than bread and broth.
The hospital denied everything, but the allegations triggered a state inquiry.
More disturbing were the disappearances. Reports emerged of patients being taken to train stations, handed a few dollars, and abandoned in unfamiliar towns.
The practice, known as “red lighting,” was a cost-cutting measure. If someone could function outside, however barely, they were sent away.
The hospital kept its per-patient state funding even after these men vanished.
By the 1920s, news outlets exposed two such cases—one man was dropped in Grand Junction, Colorado, and another in Norman, Oklahoma.
Then came the deaths. February 1922: John Shellack, a patient, was found in his bed, his throat cut. The murder was never solved.
July 1928: John Wilson Hesford, an epileptic patient, was beaten so severely by an attendant that he died a week later.
The attendant, K.K. Kyler, was acquitted after the testimony of mentally ill witnesses was dismissed in court.
Even after the scandals faded from headlines, Northern State remained under scrutiny.
In 1981, a chemical dump site linked to the hospital was found to contain human remains—body parts preserved in formaldehyde.
Two years later, 200 cans of cremated patient remains were discovered at a funeral home.
Some were buried properly. Others disappeared again, their histories erased like so many before them.
The Business of Closure—Northern State’s Final Years
By the 1960s, the asylum model was crumbling. Northern State Hospital, once a self-sustaining institution with a steady flow of state funding, found itself under pressure.
New laws and shifting policies pushed psychiatric care away from large facilities and toward community-based programs.
The hospital wasn’t built for that kind of change.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicaid and Medicare into law in 1965. The financial structure of mental health care shifted overnight.
Large state hospitals lost funding, while smaller outpatient programs gained support.
That change hit Northern State hard. Less money came in, and more patients were discharged.
The economy also played a role. Washington State‘s budget was stretched thin, and mental hospitals were expensive to run.
By 1971, the state began cutting costs. Reports showed the facility operating below capacity, and despite protests from employees, the numbers justified closure.
In early 1973, Governor Dan Evans finalized the decision. Northern State would shut down.
August 16, 1973—the last patient left. Five hundred employees lost their jobs. Some patients moved to Western State Hospital, but others walked out with nowhere to go.
Decades of operations ended with empty halls and locked doors.
The land sat unused for years. Some buildings were repurposed, but most were left to decay. The state moved on, reallocating budgets and rewriting policies.
What had once been one of Washington’s largest psychiatric hospitals was now an abandoned shell, a piece of history with no clear future.
Aftermath and Real Estate Ventures—What Happened to Northern State Hospital
The hospital closed, but the land didn’t disappear. Over 1,200 acres, dozens of buildings—someone had to take ownership.
The state held onto it for decades, leasing parts to different organizations. But abandoned hospitals don’t sell easily.
Buyers came and went. In the 1990s, Skagit County took over sections of the land, repurposing them for public use.
Some buildings were torn down, and others, including the Cascades Job Corps College and Career Academy, were converted into job training centers. But most of the old hospital remained.
Developers expressed interest. There were talks of turning it into a resort, a corporate retreat, even a film set.
None of those plans moved forward. The cost of restoration outweighed the value of the land.
And there was the contamination—decades of industrial waste, chemicals in the soil, and the lingering memory of what had happened there.
By 2018, the Port of Skagit had acquired the property and rebranded it as the Sedro-Woolley Innovation for Tomorrow (SWIFT) Center.
The goal was to attract businesses, bring in jobs, and use the land. Some companies moved in, but much of the site remained empty. The state-funded cleanup efforts, but progress was slow.
Today, Northern State’s remains are scattered across Sedro-Woolley. Some buildings stand, their walls cracked but holding. The cemetery sits quiet, overgrown, its markers faded.
Northern State Hospital—Uncovering the Past, Reshaping the Future
The wind moved through the empty corridors of Northern State Hospital, rustling the brittle edges of old medical records still scattered in forgotten rooms.
Outside, past the crumbling brick walls, over 500 people gathered under the July sun—historians, former employees, and locals drawn by curiosity.
They came to listen, to walk the grounds, to bring back the voices of those who once lived here.
On July 27, 2024, Northern State’s third annual Public History Day opened a part of the hospital that had been locked away for years.
Colman Hall opened its doors for the first time in decades, its dim corridors swallowing the light.
Visitors ran their hands over peeling paint, past rusted fixtures and dust-choked air, trying to piece together the lives that once moved through these rooms—before silence took over.
The event, backed by the Skagit County Historical Museum, the Sedro-Woolley Museum, and the Port of Skagit, wasn’t just a tour—it was an attempt to preserve the truth.
Months before the event, Northern State Hospital was once again pulled into the public eye.
In March 2024, KUOW and The Seattle Times launched a podcast series called Lost Patients, peeling back layers of history that many had tried to forget.
The series traced stories of those who had lived and died here—patients who underwent electroshock therapy without consent and others who spent decades institutionalized before disappearing into unmarked graves.
Beyond the human stories, another problem lingered beneath the soil.
In July 2023, the Washington State Department of Ecology confirmed ongoing contamination at the hospital site—chemical waste and remnants of decades-old medical disposal practices still saturate the ground.
Cleanup efforts were underway, with the Port of Skagit overseeing the process as part of its plan to transform the area into the Sedro-Woolley Innovation for Tomorrow (SWIFT) Center.
Northern State Hospital isn’t just history. It’s an ongoing conversation, shifting between remembrance and redevelopment.
Some want to preserve it, and others want to move on. But the land, the walls, and the names on old patient records—those don’t forget.
