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Minnesota State Public School For Dependent and Neglected Children 1887-1945. West Hills 1974-Present

west hills circle, Owatonna, Minnesota USA

Independent

The Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children, now known as West Hills, was located in Owatonna, Minnesota, from 1886 to 1945. The State School was created by an act of the Minnesota legislature in 1885 as an effort to provide safe, transitional housing for the state's orphaned, abandoned, and neglected children. The goal was remove to at-risk children from bad situations and place them in the State School, where they would reside in a home-like setting, receive an education, and eventually be placed with suitable farm families. During those 60 years, the State School was home to a total of 10,635 children who were orphans, or had been abused or abandoned. Both the Administration building and the State School campus are on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Reviewed by
Tara

94 Reviews
15 Helpful

May 28, 2023

Rated 4.0

Not quite what I envisioned. Lol I thought we'd get to see parts of the old building, see where they slept, etc but instead, there are 2 halls of articles, artifacts, etc about the home you can look at. The building is used for offices now so ..... not sure what it looks like. It was kind of hard to figure out where to go in on a sat. Lol there was no crowd to follow so... we eventually found a big map by a parking lot entrance that stood to go in the art building on the back side kind of. On weekdays you're supposed to enter on the opposite side. The bathrooms inside were super clean. My teens were "grading" the bathrooms we stopped at and this one gets a 10/10! 😆

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