Cherokee Mental Health Institute

The Cherokee Mental Health Institute is a state-run psychiatric facility in Cherokee, Iowa. It open in 1902 and is under the authority of the Iowa Department of Human Services.

As early as 1890, a movement was begun to build a fourth mental hospital in the state and northwest Iowa was the logical location for it. The plan was to relieve crowding from the other hospitals in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Clarinda, Iowa, Independence, Iowa, In 1894, Cherokee residents started an active campaign to get the legislature to select their city for the new hospital. Many other northwest Iowa towns also vied for the hospital, including Sheldon, LeMars, Fort Dodge, Storm Lake and "Pocahontas Center." It took 14 ballots in the legislature to give Cherokee the hospital. The legislature appropriated $12,000 to purchase a site, but it was six and a half years after the first excavation before the administration building, sitting on bare prairie land, was ready for occupancy. There was a struggle each session of the legislature to get appropriations to continue with the building. The original plan for patients was to hold alcoholics, geriatrics, drug addicts, the mentally-ill, and the criminally-insane.

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