Anoka State Hospital Cemetery in Anoka, Minnesota

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Get directions Anoka, Minnesota, USA

Coordinates: 45.21389, -93.37833
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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This burial ground represents the history and changing attitude regarding many of the Poor Farms and Mental Asylums in this region, as well as across American, if not the world. This cemetery has served the state institution from 1900 through 1965 under a variety of names.

From 1900-1919 this mental ward was know as the First State Asylum for the Insane, from 1919-1937 it was renamed the Anoka State Asylum, and during 1937-1985 it was known as the Anoka State Hospital.

Today the cemetery is no longer used. The burials remain on the grounds of the Anoka-Metro Regional Treatment Center, the latest name representing advancements in medicine and medical treatments.

The cemetery was used for people that had died while they were patients at the hospital. Graves were originally marked with a simple number which corresponded to their hospital records. In October 2008 the advocacy group Remembering With Dignity and the Anoka Metro Regional Treatment Center hosted a special service at the cemetery site.

Through the efforts of the advocacy group, a large number of headstones were initially placed which included the person's name. The hospital records indicate 400 people were buried in the cemetery from the time it opened in 1900 until the last burial in 1965. The project was completed in 2009 and now each person has a proper marker and dignified place of rest.