[2] "Founded in 1879 as the South Dakota Hospital for the Insane, the institution’s collection of neo-Classical, Art Deco and Italianate buildings have long stood vacant, and the state plans to tear down 11 of them.

In 1879, Governor William A. Howard considered the cities of Vermillion, Elk Point, and Canton when he finally decided on Yankton.

The famous psychiatrist, Leo Kanner, MD, served at YSH from 1924 to 1928, after immigrating to the United States from Austria.

Wages at the institution were poor and with so many men gone to war, hospital employees left to take up better-paying jobs.

While the staff was also of better quality than at any previous time, patients being locked up in the back wards as punishment and being threatened with never getting out of the hospital for disobeying the rules continued.

On July 1, 1974, the name of the facility was changed from Yankton State Hospital to the South Dakota Human Services Center.

The change was enacted by session of the Legislature to more clearly reflect the services such as dietary help, mental health, drug addicts, alcoholics, geriatrics, and epileptics.

In 1991, Governor George S. Mickelson found it would be more costly to renovate the old buildings dating back to the 1800s than to construct new ones specifically designed to meet the needs of the state.

Governor Mickelson advanced bills proposing design and construction of a new psychiatric facility which passed by an overwhelming majority of the 1992 State Legislature.