Saint Paul man charged after ramming gate at Nopeming Sanatorium

Deputies responding to the Nopeming Sanatorium property in Midway Township found a Saint Paul man accused of forcing his way through a locked gate and carrying items investigators say fit burglary and theft activity.

Charging documents say the disturbance unfolded just before 9 p.m. on June 17, when Gilbert Lee Mancheski, 58, allegedly opened one gate on the road into the site and then used his van to ram another. Mancheski told deputies he had spotted the roofline of Nopeming from Interstate 35, decided to check out the building and went inside. He admitted being in the structure, but denied damaging anything or taking anything, the documents say.

Deputies later searched the van and found drugs, a steel cement saw and copper wire. The sanatorium’s keyholder told investigators that one gate had been damaged and that chains and locks on both gates had been cut. When deputies and the keyholder checked the property, they reportedly found wire hanging from a pipe on the first floor that appeared to match wire in Mancheski’s van.

Mancheski now faces three felony charges: burglary, possession of burglary or theft tools and drug possession. He is scheduled to return to court in mid-July 2026.

The case has also revived attention on why Nopeming keeps drawing people long after it stopped operating. The site opened to tuberculosis patients on May 22, 1912, as the first of 13 county facilities created under Minnesota’s 1909 sanatorium law. Historical records from the Minnesota Historical Society say the facility later became the Nopeming Nursing Home in December 1971 and closed in 2002 after funding and operating problems left reopening efforts unsuccessful.

Nopeming’s medical history is inseparable from the public health crisis that created it. Historical figures show St. Louis County recorded 220 tuberculosis deaths in 1911, the year before Nopeming opened, and 163 by 1920. By the late 1920s, one historical source says the site had 30 buildings and could house about 400 patients, a scale that helped make it one of the county’s most visible responses to TB before antibiotics sharply changed treatment.

Today, the building still stands but remains closed to the public, leaving St. Louis County with a familiar mix of preservation concerns, trespassing complaints and safety risks around a site that continues to attract explorers, ghost hunters and people looking to take metal or other materials from a place that was never meant to be abandoned.