The Lincoln Regional Center

Nobody ever settled why the first building burned on the night of April 17, 1871. The five-story brick asylum, designed by D. Winchell of Chicago and built by Joseph Ward for $128,000, had already had a smaller fire before it opened, and its shoddy construction was widely condemned. Popular opinion held that it was set to hide a building likely to collapse and to collect the insurance. At least one patient died. Lincoln advanced $4,500 to shelter the rest, the state settled its $95,000 policy for $72,000, and the fire hurt Governor David Butler's administration.

What the plaque says

The Lincoln Regional Center In 1869 the Nebraska legislature authorized the construction of a facility to care for mentally ill persons. The 160-acre site was located just north of the village of Yankee Hill, and southwest of Lincoln, the newly established state capital. Through this area ran the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff, a wagon road used in the 1860s to transport freight from the Missouri River to military posts and settlements in the Platte Valley. The Nebraska Hospital for the Insane, opened in December 1870, was destroyed by fire the following April. A new building was completed in 1872. The name of this facility was changed to the Lincoln State Hospital in 1921 and to the Lincoln Regional Center in 1969. From an initial total of less than 50, the number of patients has varied as methods of diagnosis and treatment of mental illness have changed. In 1955 the patient census was 1750. By the 1980s with modern medicines and an emphasis on outpatient care, the hospital had fewer than 250 residents. Department of Public Institutions

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — 2.6 mi
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 27 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• County-City Building — 2.4 mi
• Mari Sandoz in Lincoln — 2.5 mi
• The Ferguson House — 2.6 mi
• Nebraska Statehood Memorial — 2.6 mi