Mt. Vernon, Searcy site (former Confederate arsenal/mental asylum)from 1830s endangered

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Hidden behind a nearly 200-year-old stone wall, one of Alabama’s most important historical sites is rapidly deteriorating. The site, which is one of two of the nation’s first federal arsenals to survive, was also used to house Geronimo and Apache prisoners and then became the Mount Vernon Asylum for the Colored Insane, later known as Searcy Hospital.

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In the small south Alabama town of Mount Vernon, buildings from the 1830s, mingled with modern construction, are slowly being consumed by kudzu, time and apathy. The National Trust for Historic Preservation said in its listing: “This arsenal was held by the Confederacy during the Civil War and housed Geronimo and approximately 400 Apache prisoners of war during the 1880s and 1890s. The hospital complex served as a segregated mental health facility for African Americans after 1900. The complex closed in 2012 and is currently vacant and deteriorating.”

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Among the dozens of surviving buildings, more than 30 are of historic value, including those that housed, at differing times, Geronimo, a Civil War militia, Dr. Walter Reed and African American mental patients. Many of them date to the time when the site was used as one of the nation’s inaugural 14 arsenals, marking the first time the United States created a unified military defense force. Of those 14, only Mount Vernon and Kennebec Arsenal in Maine, which also later became an asylum, survive intact, according to Mobile historian Devereaux Bemis.

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Geronimo while held at Mt. Vernon

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The photo above from 1935 shows a school that was built at Mount Vernon to teach Apache children. It no longer stands.

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The photo above shows the munitions lab/morgue in 2016.

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The photo above shows Apache prisoners at Mount Vernon.

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