Faribault State School & Hospital

The Minnesota state legislature authorized the board of directors of the Minnesota Institute for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind to open in 1879 an experimental department for "idiotic and feeble-minded children" (Laws 1879 c31). In July of that year, a class was organized of fifteen children transferred from the Rochester and St. Peter state hospitals. In 1881, the legislature directed that the School for Idiots and Imbeciles was no longer an experimental program and was to be connected with the Minnesota Institute for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind (Laws 1881 c145). In 1887, the school was made a department of the institute and the name was changed to the Minnesota Institute for Defectives (Laws 1887 c205). The name School for the Feeble-Minded was adopted in 1887, changed to the School for Feeble-Minded and Colony for Epileptics, and again changed in 1949, to the Minnesota School and Colony (Laws 1949 c142). It became the Faribault State School and Hospital in 1955 (Laws 1955 c662); in 1967, the Faribault State Hospital (Laws 1967 c6); and in 1985, the Faribault Regional Center (Executive Order No. 85- 17). The institution closed on July 1, 1998.