The medical facility was constructed and operated by the state of West Virginia. Initially the staff concentrated on the tuberculosis outbreak, and then it was transitioned into a mental health facility. State officials, however, handed over the facility to the Ohio County Commission, and the county soon closed the hospital in 1972 because of the structure’s condition.’
After tuberculosis patients were no longer being treated, drug addicts, alcoholics, and the clinically insane received treatments at the former state hospital, a type of facility that was common in the 1950s and 1960s, according to Ohio County Commissioner Orphy Klempa. “Those kinds of hospitals used to sprinkle the countrysides all over our country,” he said. “We separated those people from the rest of us. We weren’t very good to some of the people of our past.” Former Ohio County Sheriff’s Deputy (and currently Ohio County magistrate) Charlie Murphy was frequently dispatched to Roney’s Point between 1978-87, and he has lived his entire life in this area of Ohio County. Many continue to believe the Schmulbach Mansion was used at one time as the sanitarium for tuberculosis patients, but Murphy confirmed that is merely urban myth.