Winnebago County acquired this area of approximately 580 acres over many decades beginning in 1865 and developed four facilities here—the Winnebago County Asylum, Poor Farm, Poor House, and Sunny View Sanitorium—to care for and treat the county's cognitively disabled, chronically ill, poor, elderly, and people diagnosed with psychological disorders. Joseph Jackson, a pioneer settler of Oshkosh, was an early advocate for care of the poor, and after his election as chairman of the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors in 1846, he oversaw the county's early public relief efforts. The first county facility, the Poor Farm, was constructed near this site in 1871 to care for the poor and the mentally ill, and agricultural buildings were added for self-sustainability and to provide work for able-bodied patients. Several years later, Oshkosh architect William Waters designed new facilities, including the Winnebago County Insane Asylum, built on this site in 1893 at a cost of $83,000 and demolished in 1968. A new Poor House was built in 1906 but burned after being struck by lightning in 1944. North of here, Sunny View Sanitorium was constructed in 1915 to care for tuberculosis patients. Today, the fairgrounds occupies the former site of Sunny View Sanitorium and the county cemetery, the Poor Farm's acreage was transformed into Winnebago County Community Park in the 1960s, the James P. Coughlin Center and Nature Preserve and the Winnebago County behavioral health facility stand where agricultural outbuildings once stood, and Parkview Health Center, successor to the earlier institutions, provides rehabilitation and elderly care for county residents.