The State of Minnesota opened a new institutional facility outside the town of Cambridge, Minnesota in June of 1925. It was originally named the Minnesota Colony for Epileptics, and was home to clients who were so severely afflicted with epilepsy that they could not easily function outside an institutional setting. As pharmecutical treatments for epileptics improved, the facility began to change. By 1949, the name was changed to the Cambridge State School and Hospital. The clients included those with developmental disabilities and other "mental deficiencies", as they were then called. During this period of time, most patients were expected to remain in institutional settings for their entire life. The goal was to care for the patients away from normal society, rather than rehabilitating the patients to allow for community integration.
During the 1950s, the number of clients grew incredibly, and new buildings were constructed to keep up with the demand. In the early 1960s, the peak population of 2,008 was reached. Statewide, there were over 16,000 residents in the Minnesota State Hospital system. This coincided with an effort by the Minnesota Department of Public Welfare to "humanize" the living conditions of people in state institutions. Treatment and rehabilitation progams were begun. Other options, such as community placement, were also looked into, and the number of residents began to decline. In 1967, the institution became Cambridge State Hospital.
The population continued to drop, but it was a 1972 lawsuit which most affected the State Hospital system in Minnesota. A class action suit was filed against the six State Hospitals by the parents of a few residents who felt that the conditions, care, treatment and training did not meet constitutional standards. When Federal Judge Earl Larson ruled in 1974 against the State Hospitals, many new restrictions and changes were made to the structure of the system. Strict requirements were set in regards to the rights of individual residents, the staff to resident ratios, and the placement of people into community-based programs. In addition, a 1980 decree set strict population restrictions were set which ultimately cut the populations in half over seven years. The case was ultimately settled in 1987, and it had a dramatic effect on the services provided to those with developmental disabilities.
The program at the Cambridge facility continued to change as the methods of treatment and rehabilitation changed. In 1985, the name was again changed during a statewide attempt to regionalize institutional care. It became the Cambridge Regional Human Services Center, and provided residential, training, rehabilitation, medical, and other supports. The goal was to allow people with developmental disabilities to function as independently as possible, and to allow them to move out into state-run community service homes. The final program change came in 1998, when it became the Minnesota Extended Treatment Options (or M.E.T.O.). New group homes were built behind the old buildings of the institution, and the program runs at a peak population of 48 residents, who usually only stay for treatment for a few months before moving on to other programs.
With the size of the program drastically reduced in scale, the State of Minnesota was left with a surplus of unused land and buildings. Recently, the State sold a large portion of the campus land East of the highway to the city of Cambridge. The State retained a portion of land surrounding the M.E.T.O. campus, including the land on which the Administration Building and the old brick Cottages were located. Since the old buildings were falling into severe disrepair and were becoming an upkeep and potential liability problem, The Minnesota Legislature provided the funds needed to demolish them. The city is also proposing the demolition of several of the older buildings on its property as a part of a redevelopment plan.