This page page, part of the "Traverse City State Hospital" site, contains something about the past and present of the farm operations of the Traverse City State Hospital mental institution. At this time, this page consists mostly of material from the Traverse City Record Eagle, used with permission.

Click here to see a larger, unaltered version of the historic postcard which was used in the logo for this page. Click here to send e-mail. Look more historic photos, cow pictures, and present-day photos here in the near future.

Please see Rolling Centuries Farm to find out about preservation plans, new usage, and events at the "Barns".

Of ornate barns, a champion cow and a piggery: Tour explores the farming past of Traverse City State Hospital

By MIKE NORTON
Record-Eagle staff writer

TRAVERSE CITY - Most visitors to the Grand Traverse Commons have been told the story about the hundreds of mentally ill patients who spent their lives in the wards and rooms of the former Traverse City State Hospital from the 1880s to the 1970s.

But until Saturday, few people had seen the luxurious quarters of the hospital's most world-famous resident or walked across the grassy knoll where she lies buried.

Her name was Traverse Colantha Walker, and she was a cow.

Not just any cow, either. She was a grand champion, producing 200,114 pounds of milks and 7,525 pounds of butterfat during her long life. And when she died in 1932, hospital staff and patients held a banquet in her honor. Her gravestone can still be seen at the south end of the Commons property, near the two massive dairy barns left over from the days when the hospital's extensive herds, orchards and vegetable gardens supplied most of the food needs of its population.

Those days were spotlighted at Saturday's "Day at the Commons," an open house on the grounds of the former psychiatric hospital, which included hikes, video presentations, tours of the venerable Building 50 and a ceremonial tree-planting in honor of former head groundskeeper Earl Steele. But the highlight of the day may have been the stately brick dairy barns, which were open to public view for the first time in decades.

Despite years of neglect and dust, the barns are still impressive structures, with their brick floors, ornate stalls and graceful roof trusses. Built in 1900 and 1932, they're almost all that remains of a farm operation that once stretched as far south as the current site of the Meijer store.

Farming was part of the hospital operation from its very beginning, said Steele - partly as a therapeutic exercise for those patients who wanted fresh air and exertion, but also to supply the needs of what quickly grew to be a small city of its own.

"We had to produce as much as we possibly could, because appropriations never could meet all our needs," he said. "We'd put up 2,000 bushels of tomatoes to be processed and canned each fall, and 65 barrels of cabbage for sauerkraut by late November.

At its height in the 1920s, the operation included vast orchards of cherries, peaches and apples, vineyards and vegetable gardens, field crops - especially potatoes, which were a prominent part of the diet - and all kinds of livestock, from beef and dairy cattle to chickens, horses and pigs.

"They had a huge piggery over where the junior high stands now," said Bob Wilhelm of the Grand Traverse Pioneer and Historical Society. "When they built that school I told them they should name it the Piggery, but they didn't think it was such a good idea."

As the hospital's population decreased after World War II, the farming operation became less necessary and more controversial; local farmers sometimes complained that the hospital wouldn't buy their produce, and some critics wondered if it wasn't taking unfair advantage of the patients to have them work for their room and board. The farm system was shut down in 1957.

But many local residents still remember it fondly. And to Wilhelm, the farm made an awful lot of sense.

"You hate to see things not being used," he said.

"Turning the earth"

Photo by Christina N. Bowles, text and photo used with permission of the Traverse City Record Eagle

Dan Bristol, a Traverse City farmer, plows half an acre of land with a 100-year-old plow and three Belgian horses near the old State Hospital to help make a garden for county prisoners. Deputy James Panek of the Grand Traverse County Sheriff's Department enlisted Bristol's help in preparing the land for use. Up to five inmates will plant and harvest a half-acre garden this year, the second year of the project. The plot will be filled with strawberries, melons, potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

Pigs

---

Click on the following picture for a page on Barn #206

For more on historic barns in general, see the The Barn Journal Online