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UER Forum > UE Photography > Can't shake the scandal: Montana Developmental Center (Viewed 723 times)
Aran 


Location: Kansas City
Gender: Male
Total Likes: 1839 likes


Huh. I guess covid made me a trendsetter.

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Can't shake the scandal: Montana Developmental Center
< on 3/14/2022 4:37 AM >
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On my way to explore the ghost town of Comet, I noticed a few abandoned buildings on the side of the road. Though I didn’t have enough daylight to explore them, I marked my map for a subsequent visit and returned at the end of February to see what this place was. Getting in required some climbing and tight squeezes, but I managed it and was able to find a location that was as untouched as it was interesting. A word of warning before we start- this place, like all American asylums, has a long and sordid history that spans over a century. As a result, this writeup is long- in fact, it might be my longest ever. So sit down, strap in, and let’s begin.


1.) The original Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum building

In 1887 it was decided that Montana needed a facility to care for disabled children, and this need was met six years later with the opening of the Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum in Boulder, MT. This facility housed deaf and blind children, while both mentally disabled children and adults were cared for at the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs. However, it was feared that “the tendency of a feeble minded child would be to become insane” if exposed to adult patients at the Montana State Hospital, which functioned at the time as an insane asylum.


2.) Hallway in the original Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum building


3.) One of the rooms inside the original Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum building

In 1905 the Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum opened a new building for the “feeble minded” on a nearby land parcel to the original school in order to alleviate these concerns. Thirty five children were moved from the Montana State Hospital to the new building on the Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum grounds, and over the next several decades the asylum grew and added several buildings until it became a campus in it’s own right. In 1937 the deaf and blind students were moved to a new facility in Great Falls and the asylum was renamed the Montana State Training School.


4.) Exterior of the main administration building

Online records concerning the early days of the Montana State Training School are practically nonexistent, though some physical documents may exist in the Historical Society archives in Helena. Regardless, there’s enough information available to piece together a picture of what life was like at the institution, and it’s not a pretty one. One of the earlier sources is a biography of Dr. Philip Pallister, a physician at the school from 1940 to 1970.


5.) Main entry staircase to the administration building

Pallister recounts how a twenty year old patient was beaten to death by an irritated night watchwoman in 1949, and though he pushed for an investigation the death was covered up by the superintendent and county attorney as an accidental fall in a bathtub. This was not an isolated incident. Two years prior, a patient with measles had frozen to death after being transported via “ambulance”- the ambulance in question consisting of four children with Down’s Syndrome pushing a kids wagon through a blizzard with no staff supervision. But these incidents only scratch the surface of abuse that he witnessed and perpetuated during his tenure.


6.) A classroom inside the main administration building. The chalkboard reads "This building is closed Feb 1986. Heat and water is OFF"

In 1883 a European scientist named Sir Francis Galton introduced the idea of eugenics to the world. It didn’t take long until American scientists began to strongly advocate for the implementation of eugenics policies as a solution for the problem of what to do with “unfit” members of society. Well respected (at the time) psychologists and conservationists began lobbying for policies such as immigration restriction, segregation, forced sterilization, and even extermination. Of these policies, only the last one was never enacted in the US- but their work inspired their German contemporaries in the fledgling Nazi Party. America’s efforts in pioneering the field of eugenics is a shameful secret not many history books like to dive deeply into, but before the Final Solution there was the Buck v Bell ruling, and before the concentration camps there were American asylums.


7.) Another classroom inside the main administration building.

In 1907 Indiana passed the first compulsory sterilization law in the world, and numerous states followed suit. Montana was one of these states, passing an act in 1923 to “prevent the procreation of hereditary idiots, feebleminded, insane, and epileptics who are inmates of state custodial institutions, by authorizing and providing eugenical sterilization of said inmates.” The horrors of American eugenics initiatives and the genocides they were utilized to carry out must be acknowledged, though I will not delve too deeply into them here as the sheer weight and scale of that topic goes beyond the narrow scope of this write up.


8.) Another room inside the main administration building

The Montana State Training School was one of two “feeder institutions” from which sterilization candidates were drawn, and 256 people were sterilized in Montana between 1923 and 1954. After the horrors of the Holocaust became common knowledge, sterilization numbers decreased due to a reluctance to enforce eugenics-based laws and a reform passed in 1969 required the consent of patients to conduct sterilization. A further sixty six people were sterilized in Montana between 1969 and 1972, and the compulsory sterilization law was finally repealed in 1981.


9.) The exterior of the steam plant, which itself is split between three adjacent buildings. However, only one of the three was accessible.

Sterilizations were carried out at the Montana State Training School until 1924 in a poorly equipped operating room that, according to Pallister’s biography, was so infested with insects that one person had to be tasked with constantly killing them whenever a sterilization surgery was underway. Furthermore, of the twenty eight staff attendants carrying out sterilizations, only one was a registered nurse. The rest were mostly untrained. Aseptic techniques and patient medical symptoms alike were ignored as an inconvenience. Pallister was appalled by conditions in the medical ward, and began to institute a series of reforms and modernizations that eventually led to a decrease in patient deaths and illnesses.


10.) Boilers #5, #6, and the base of the smokestack in the steam plant

Pallister’s time spent as the lead physician at the Montana State Training School studying his patients in the hospital and on the autopsy table eventually led him to reject the eugenicist ideas he once held at the start of his career. “I had come to my senses. We had to start treating them as human beings,” he stated in his biography. With public support for eugenics waning, forced sterilizations in Montana ceased in 1954, though Montana to this day has never issued a formal apology to the victims of its forced sterilization law.


11.) Boilers #3 and #4 in the steam plant

Despite the end of forced sterilizations and the medical care reforms that Pallister spearheaded, abuse continued at the Montana State Training School. Renamed in 1967 to the Boulder River School and Hospital, the institute reached it’s peak in the 1960’s with over 1500 patients. At one point a ranch and farm was operated on the asylum grounds by patients to provide food and raise funds, but due to lack of funding none of the patients were payed for their work. The ranch was shut down in 1971 since using involuntarily committed patients as free labor became seen as a form of slavery.


12.) Control panel for Boiler #4

Information regarding conditions at the Boulder River School and Hospital becomes scarce again from 1970 to the mid eighties, but enough bits and pieces are scattered around to form a rough picture. From its very conception the asylum had been plagued by budgetary issues, but those shortfalls became worse than ever during this time period. At one point the institution was operating with a skeleton crew of only a quarter of the personnel needed to effectively function, with a 100% staff turnover rate.


13.) Looking down the ladder from the catwalks in the steam plant

The record number of patients combined with an insufficient budget to hire and retain enough staff led to a pattern of abuse through neglect. Nine patients died from accidents or neglect in the span of a single year, though very little information is available concerning these deaths. This trend continued until the early eighties, when a 1982 article in the Tribune Capitol Bureau announced that “Boulder River Rids Itself of Horror Headlines.” Higher employee salaries, outsourcing of patients to other programs, and another round of internal policy reforms resolved most of the issues the Boulder River School and Hospital faced, and the institution’s name was changed to the Montana Developmental Center in 1985.


14.) Control room and main office of the steam plant

From 1985 through the 2000s, the Montana Developmental Center mostly stayed out of the news and business quietly carried on as usual. There was some chatter in local newspapers as the institution began to switch from the asylum-style, long term care model to the short term, treatment center model with a focus on societal reintegration, but by and large the Montana Developmental Center appeared to stay clear of the scandals that had defined it for decades.


15.) A side room in the steam plant, used as a nesting ground by pigeons.

This all changed in 2010 when an employee was convicted of raping one of the patients, with a possible five more rapes that were substantiated but never proven. The investigation found that the Montana Developmental Center was still plagued by the same institutional problems it had faced during the Boulder River School and Hospital years- they had just gotten better at hiding them. Reports described the atmosphere as “chaotic” and “fearful,” with treatment plans not even being pursued as the undersized and underfunded staff struggled to even manage crises on a day to day basis. Mechanical restraints and forced sedation for uncooperative patients and staff injuries from combative patients were not uncommon occurrences.


16.) A water tank in the steam plant. The tank reads, "Unsuitable for food or drinking. Water tank has contaminated flammable liquid. Not petroleum free."

This investigation contributed heavily to the closing of the Montana Developmental Center in 2015, by order of a State Legislature that had finally gotten fed up with the problems the institute generated over the years. Even so, this was a controversial move that faced significant opposition from the residents of Boulder, where as much as a third of the entire town’s population worked for the Montana Developmental Center and its presence was a strong source of local identity.


17.) The base of the smokestack in the steam plant, and a set of exit doors


18.) A corner of the water tank room in the steam plant, full of miscellaneous stuff

When the Montana Developmental Center shut down the campus was divided up. The residential section on the north side of the river is now a residential neighborhood. The eastern portion currently houses the Riverside Youth Correctional Facility, a small girls-only juvenile prison. The main campus area became home to the Alternative Youth Adventures wilderness reform school.


19.) Boilers #1 and #2 in the steam plant


20.) Some piping and machinery in the steam plant

A 2016 audit by the Montana Department of Corrections found one unsubstantiated claim of inmate on inmate rape at the Riverside Youth Correctional Facility, and the Alternative Youth Adventures program has its own share of abuse. Based out of Colorado, the reform school had campuses in Utah and Montana. Very little information is available concerning conditions at the Montana location, but the Utah campus was shuttered after a prison riot and the death of a student through medical neglect. All three campuses used the “wilderness model” developed by the Aspen Achievement Academy, which has been confirmed to be abusive. In the wake of this scandal, Alternative Youth Adventures downsized its Montana campus and renamed the program Youth Dynamics. Both the Riverside Youth Correctional Facility and the Youth Dynamics program remain in operation to this day.


21.) Abandoned backpacking, snowshoeing, and camping gear from the Alternative Youth Adventures program. Found in the basement of the main administration building.

As of 2022 perhaps a third of the Montana Developmental Center campus sits abandoned. The main administration building, original Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum building, and steam plant are all accessible, and several smaller abandoned buildings that appear to be empty are currently sealed. I was able to successfully explore those two buildings, but unfortunately was chased away from the campus when I caught the attention of several Youth Dynamics students housed in a nearby building. They started yelling at me and waving their arms out the windows, so I decided to leave before they attracted the attention of the guards. On a subsequent visit I was escorted off the property after being caught inside the original Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum building by a caretaker and his dog, at which point I decided to cut my losses on this particular location and not push my luck any further.


22.) Boiler #2, seen through an exterior window to the steam plant

Over the course of its 122 years in operation, this institution changed its name a total of nine times. In several of those instances, the name change was enacted to distance the institution from the various abuse scandals that made the news over the years. The names it went by include:

1893: Montana State Deaf and Dumb Asylum
1903: Montana School for Deaf and Dumb
1905: Montana School for Deaf, Dumb and Feeble Minded
1910: Montana School for the Deaf, Blind and Backward Children
1928: Montana Training School for Deaf, Blind and Feeble Minded
1937: Montana State Training School
1959: Montana State Training School and Hospital
1967: Boulder River School and Hospital
1985: Montana Developmental Center

If you’re still with me after this 2000 word essay, thanks for reading and I hope you found it as interesting as I did. I definitely have more Montana abandonments coming so stay tuned, and I’ll see you next time!



[last edit 3/14/2022 4:39 AM by Aran - edited 1 times]

"Sorry, I didn't know I'm not supposed to be here," he said, knowing full well he wasn't supposed to be there.

Pearson 


Location: Chicagoland/Sometimes Austin
Total Likes: 470 likes


You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

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Re: Can't shake the scandal: Montana Developmental Center
< Reply # 1 on 3/14/2022 5:39 AM >
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Phenomenal writeup as always man. Beautiful photos and I love those boilers!




macgruder 


Location: Northern NJ
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Re: Can't shake the scandal: Montana Developmental Center
< Reply # 2 on 3/14/2022 3:25 PM >
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cool stuff! nice looking buildings.




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Cor726 


Location: Saskatchewan
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Re: Can't shake the scandal: Montana Developmental Center
< Reply # 3 on 3/14/2022 8:44 PM >
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Nice writeup - I recall scouting that place (the big building it attractive) but I only seem to remember that building being the only one that looked possible to explore but there was a lot of activity going on and eyes on us (circa 2010) so we passed it by for other locations.




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msart 


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Re: Can't shake the scandal: Montana Developmental Center
< Reply # 4 on 3/15/2022 9:53 PM >
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Great location and shots. Love the staircase!




Aran 


Location: Kansas City
Gender: Male
Total Likes: 1839 likes


Huh. I guess covid made me a trendsetter.

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Re: Can't shake the scandal: Montana Developmental Center
< Reply # 5 on 3/23/2022 7:22 AM >
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Posted on Forum: UER Forum
Posted by Cor726
Nice writeup - I recall scouting that place (the big building it attractive) but I only seem to remember that building being the only one that looked possible to explore but there was a lot of activity going on and eyes on us (circa 2010) so we passed it by for other locations.


Thanks! There was still a lot of activity surrounding it, even during the weekend. I just got lucky the on my first visit when I decided to quickly enter in broad daylight, but it was the only time I'd have been able to try and explore it so I decided to take the gamble.




"Sorry, I didn't know I'm not supposed to be here," he said, knowing full well he wasn't supposed to be there.

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