Fairview Training Facility

This place is on private property. Listing for informational purposes only. Please do not visit without express permission from the land owner. Fairview was opened in 1908 as the Oregon State Institution for the Feeble-Minded. It was the first asylum in Oregon that was opened under the premise of being educational—it wasn't just a sort of "jail for crazies", but a place that provided institutionalized people with the training and skills necessary to make it back out into the world (at least in theory). When the asylum opened in December of 1908, it did so with the transfer of 39 patients from the Oregon State Insane Asylum, which is now the Oregon State Hospital. OSH is still the primary psychiatric hospital in Oregon since the closure of Dammasch State Hospital in 1995 and was also the filming site of the film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, for those who are lit/film buffs. Anyway, when Fairview was first opened in 1908, it was on a 670-acre square plot of land but was comprised only of four buildings: An administrative building (LeBreton Cottage), a dormitory, a laundry and a boiler house. However, by 1913 the asylum had acquired two more cottages for various purposes. They continued to build cottages and other buildings on Fairview grounds until the complex (for lack of a better word) was comprised of at least ten cottages, the laundry, the boiler room, a recreational facility, a chapel, and a school building. One of the cottages, Pierce Cottage, was gutted by a fire just last year, and two men were charged with arson almost immediately following. In 1923, the Oregon Board of Eugenics was established, and legislature was passed that provided for the "sterilization of all feeble-minded, insane, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sexual perverts who are a menace to society." By 1929—within six years of the legislature's passing—300 of Fairview's residents had been sterilized. The asylum changed its name from the Oregon State Institution for the Feeble-Minded to "Oregon Fairview Home" in 1933, and in 1965 it was again renamed to "Fairview Hospital and Training Center." The final name-change to simply "Fairview Training Center" occurred in 1979, and on March 1, 2000, the facility was finally shut down for good after ninety-two years of continuous operation. The land was purchased by a group called Sustainable Fairview Associates, a portion of which was sold for the building of Pringle Creek Community, a sustainable housing development.