The older of two burial grounds belonging to the Norfolk state hospital, opened with the institution in 1888 when it was the State Hospital for the Insane. It stands on the former hospital grounds in Norfolk, Madison County, about six hundred yards from the New Cemetery that replaced it.
Most of the hospital's historic buildings were demolished in 2016. The burial grounds remain.
Burial records for the institution, covering 1888 to 1954, are held by History Nebraska, which has published an index giving name, county of residence, date of death, date of burial, and section and lot. A fire in September 1901 destroyed the hospital's main building and the records kept there, so the earliest years are incomplete. Roughly seventy-three burials are recorded without a location that can now be identified.