After years of delays and two disastrous landslides, the the former site of Dixmont State Hospital will no longer have a Wal-Mart. You, too, can see the stalled construction (which looks like the world’s most difficult putting green) by traveling northwest on Route 65; look for the sudden squeeze into one lane, next to a cliff face.

Instead of a massive shopping complex, Wal-Mart has decided to “…return the hillside to a pre-development, natural sloping condition that includes trees and vegetation.” They have not ruled out building a store there, and they aren’t letting go of the property just yet. In Wal-Mart’s defense, their spokesman answered this question after posing it to himself: “Is there ever a realistic opportunity for us to build there? I don’t think so.”

Below, you can see an old Google Maps satellite photograph of the beautiful, dilapidated complex that used to be there, the famous Dixmont State Hospital, which, for almost 150 years, somehow managed to coexist peacefully with the hillside’s 42 million liters of dirt.

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