Cedar Vale Nursing Center

Cedar Vale Manor

In the small town of Cedar Vale Kansas lies a few buildings on our website, one of those being the Cedar Vale Jail and another being this location, the Cedar Vale Manor / Cedar Vale Nursing Center. Upon first looking at the building it reminds me very much of the Florence Health Care Center which lies in Florence Kansas, a town of similar population decline.

The population of the town around the 1970s would have been over 1000 and as the population of the town aged, so did the need for a nursing home. Community leaders got together and in 1973 a nursing home was planned for Cedar Vale. Within weeks ground broke on a 50-bed home by developers Ernest Rice and Arthur Bland with an estimated timeline of 4 months to complete. Arthur Bland would act as the supervisor of the facility.

The grand opening was held in October 1974 (seems like construction went longer than expected). Administrator Daniel Sawyer and Nursing Supervisor Helen Gabrial were there along with the thirty employees that would start work at the facility. At the time it was owned by the City of Cedar Vale which is also the name that was on the Industrial Bonds used to build it.

Two years after it opened it began being leased by Joint Ventures Corporation of Blue Springs MO. They took over the management and operation of the nursing home with experience managing six other nursing homes in the State of Kansas.

Newspapers detail the residents of the Manor as enjoying music, floral arrangements, lots of Bingo, card games, dominos and more put on by activities director Sydia Young at the time. Six employees also made the newspaper headlines in 1977 with the achievement in Medication Aid Training, a course sponsored by the Kansas Health Care Association. Testers had to get 100/120 questions right to pass the test, all six employees passed that took it including Iola Pettigrew, Reatha Plumley, Alice Moon, Wanda Lampson, Linda Campbell and Joyce Ridgeway.

Cedar Vale Nursing Center

Undergoing a name change to become the Cedar Vale Nursing Center the facility started to experience some patterns of behavior that weren’t deemed acceptable by the State of Kansas. It was cited in December 1990 for not following through on mental health services. Male and female residents were walking the hallways in see-through gowns and lacking undergarments.

As the population continued to decline and the economy swayed in these communities so did the needs of the citizens and the sustainability of businesses. Ultimately the Cedar Vale Nursing Center was unable to sustain the test of time and had to close down probably around the 2010s. It has sat abandoned since and is currently for sale.

Gallery Below of Cedar Vale Nursing Center

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