Our boat left Alcatraz Landing at 5 pm. We docked at Alcatraz Island about 15 or 20 minutes later. This is a view of San Francisco from Alcatraz Island.
The guides told us that we were going to go through the same route that prisoners would take without the extensive body searches.
So the prisoners would get off the Ferry and walk up this hill.
This is the guard tower.
Notice the sign. Alcatraz closed as a Federal Prison in 1963. Sometime after that the various Indian tribes reclaimed this island in protest of being driven from their land.
So up the hill we went to the shower room.
Here in the shower room, the prisoners were stripped and searched. They showered and were assigned a number and given a uniform.
They got supplies for their cell.
They were marched, still naked, to their cells. Each prison got their own cell. As you can see there wasn't much room in there. No privacy either. The guide told us that the prisoners would spend 23 hours a day in this tiny little cell unless they had a job. They got three 20 minute sessions for meals.
This is the dining area. This was potentially the most dangerous area in the prison because there were lots of prisoners in here at one time all armed with knives, spoons and forks. There were tear gas canisters throughout the room that the guards could use if there was a problem.
This is the door to the dining hall. It's huge! There are also bars as well.
All the windows in the dining hall were covered with bars as well. I can't imagine being here so close to civilization and not being allowed out.
One of the cool things about the night tour is that they opened up sections of the prison that are normally closed. This stairway off the dining hall leads up to the hospital. They opened it up for us for about 30 minutes.
This is the operating room. I don't know if there was no power running to this room or they lit it up with a lantern for effect but it was really creepy in there.
This is the pharmacy.
This is the infirmary.
This is the cell where the 'Birdman of Alcatraz' stayed until he left the island. He never kept birds here.
This is D-Block where all the really bad prisoners stayed. The bottom row is solitary confinement or 'the hole'. The prisoners that stayed here include Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Creepy Karpis as well as many others.
Photos of the most notable prisoners.
John in one the solitary cells. I stepped in there and it was really creepy. All the other cells had a sink, a toilet, a little table and seat but these cells were completely empty. I think if you where put in here you lived like an animal.
The inside of one of the solitary cells.
Right next to D-Block is the library. If you were good, you could put your name on a list for a book and if the book was available, it would be brought to your cell.
The Battle of Alcatraz occurred in 1946 when two prisoners overtook one of the guards and then released several other men from their cells. One of the men was able to get into the gun gallery, which was an elevated hall that went the width of the building so that the guard could see down each of the aisles.
He used a bar-spreader which allowed him to squeeze through the bars and get into the gallery while the guard was away.
The guards were put into one of the cells and each was searched for the key to the yard door. When they finally found the key, the prisoners still couldn't get the door open because the lock had jammed.
The warden called in the Marines and after two days of heavy gun-fire, the prison was re-taken by the guards. During the failed escape attempt, one of the guards was killed along with Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard, the ring leaders of the escape attempt. Several others were wounded.
This is one of the cells on C-D Street (pronounced 'Seedy'). This was one of the choice cells because it was close to one of the windows. When the wind was blowing just right, the prisoners could hear the sounds of San Francisco. The prisoners in these cells could also have some personal things.
A view of San Francisco from the island.
In another escape attempt, Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin dug their way out of their cells. They did so by widening the air vent at the bottom of the cell using a spoon.
On the night of the escape, the men put paper-mache dummies in their beds to fool the guards. They made a raft of rain coats. The clothes the men were wearing along with parts of the raft were found by Angel Island. It's assumed the three men drowned in the bay. Their bodies were never found.
The lighthouse.
C-D Street. At one point in the tour, John & I looked around and we were the only people there. There was total silence in the building. It was very eerie. The lighting didn't help, either.At the very end, one of the guides gave us a demonstration on how they opened and closed the cell doors. Remember, this prison was closed in 1963 but the gear and clutch system still worked which was amazing. The guard could decide which of the cells he wanted to open, then using the clutch, hook the doors and then the lever would slide them open.
When he closed the cell doors, the sound was thunderous and you could feel it in the floor. Imagine hearing that sound multiple times a day and/or night!The guide was saying that during one of these demonstrations, a lady had stepped inside one of the cells. It took 10 hours to get her out because the mechanism had stopped working for some reason. Then he mentioned that the toilets in those cells hadn't worked in a really long time. I'm glad I didn't get the wild idea of doing the same thing.
At 8 pm, we got on the last boat that would leave Alcatraz for the day. It was pitch black in the bay. The lighting on the island was very creepy. We didn't see any ghosts but I was on the lookout.
What a miserable place to spend any amount of time as a prisoner.
