MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — On Milledgeville’s south side sits a massive 2,000-acre property that in the 1960s housed the world’s largest mental health facility.

Each year many curious minds are drawn to the historic Central State Hospital grounds wanting to learn more about the institution that has been described as a city unto itself when it was fully operational. 

Starting Monday, those looking out their car windows at the mammoth buildings will be able to wonder less and learn more about CSH history thanks to a Georgia Humanities Council grant. David Wells, a past president and board member of Georgia’s Old Capital Heritage Center (GOCHC) at The Depot (formerly known as Georgia’s Old Capital Museum), applied for the grant and created a self-guided driving tour of the CSH campus to educate the public on the hospital’s history. 

In addition to having served with the GOCHC, Wells is also a trolley tour guide where he often asks tourists where or how they first heard of Milledgeville. Some know it as Georgia’s capital during the Civil War while many others are familiar with it being the home of the former insane asylum. 

“It was such an important part of Baldwin County for such a long period of time, and I want to highlight that particular part of it and the good things that happened,” Wells told The Union-Recorder Tuesday.

Those wishing to take the tour need just a couple of items — a brochure and a smartphone or CD player inside their vehicles. The brochure may be picked up starting Monday either at the GOCHC Just Imagine Cottage located at 95 Depot Circle Drive on the CSH campus or the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau downtown. The brochure features a CSH campus map highlighting tour stops and corresponding QR codes. Those codes can be scanned by smartphones, and once they are a voice narration (Wells’ voice) is triggered. Individuals who do not own smartphones can pick up a CD from the same locations and insert them into their CD players so they may take the tour. The tour features about 10 stops with each featuring between three and four minutes of narration. The information provided includes the history of the buildings featured, who they were named for, and even controversies centered around them. Something else tour-takers may find interesting and helpful is a QR code that gives them access to a references sheet highlighting the various sources Wells used for information. One he says was particular valuable was a book by Mary De Young called “Madness: An American History of Mental Illness and Its Treatment,” which was published in 2010.  

Wells and the GOCHC will hold a kickoff event celebrating the start of the self-guided CSH driving tour Sunday at 2 p.m. at the hospital’s old train depot located at 752 Broad Street. There he will formally present the brochure which will become available to the public Monday. The event is open to the public.

While the tour is meant to highlight the positives surrounding CSH, Wells doesn’t turn a blind eye to the negative procedures practiced at the hospital, but does point out that treatments used locally matches those used around the country. Asked if he has a favorite stop along the tour, Wells named the Jones Building. He says he hasn’t been inside himself, but has seen pictures that make it look like the people working there literally dropped what they were doing and moved over to the Kidd Building once it was ready.  

“That is interesting to me,” Wells said. “Plus in the narration I talk about some of the therapeutic techniques that were used over the years starting with surgical attempts to alleviate mental illness, insulin shock, electroconvulsive therapy as well as lobotomies.”

He also sees the driving tour as a way to draw attention to GOCHC’s efforts to renovate the Depot into a multi-use museum space. The grant making the CSH driving tour possible comes from the Georgia Humanities Council a nonprofit whose aim it is to preserve state history. Wells said the grant amount was a little less than $2,000, which will pay for developing the brochures that will be available to the public come Monday.