Sanatorium, Mississippi
Sanatorium is a community in Simpson County, Mississippi, U.S., northwest of Magee. The community was named for the Mississippi Tuberculosis Sanatorium, founded in 1916, which was a hospital for TB patients from 1918 to the 1950s. In 1976, the old Sanatorium facilities were transferred to the Mississippi Department of Mental Health and renamed Boswell Regional Center, which is now an Intermediate Care Facility for Persons with Mental Retardation and other developmental disabilities. Its central building, Dexter Hall, received a Heritage Award for Restoration in 2014.
Sanatorium lies between the current U. S. Highway 49 and Highway 149, and was once home to the only drive-in movie theatre in the region. The ruins of the screen can still be seen from the old highway. George Grubbs, a Simpson County judge, owned the Scaife Hotel on Highway 149 which was converted into a halfway house in the 1990s. The hotel was destroyed by fire on 18 May, 2020.
Legion Lake, a state-operated recreational lake, sits due north of the community. In the 1990s, the Sanatorium postal address was abolished, and the local post office on the grounds of Boswell Regional Center was demolished.
