Arizona Tourism Video

While you were a child growing up did you want to play cowboys?  Maybe you wanted to be the bad guy instead of the hero with the white hat.  One of the places you certainly dreamed a little about was the Southwestern Arizona Yuma Prison.  Where the “really bad guys” were sent to serve out their time in prison. Not only were they prisoners but they were also forced to construct their own cells!

The prison opened for prisoners on July 1, 1875 with seven prisoners.  Those 7 had been the individuals constructing the prison.  Now, the prison was not particular about who was incarcerated, because there were also twenty-nine female prisoners that were incarcerated at the prison.  TB was a medical problem for the prisoners, 111 died during their time at Yuma Territorial Prison.  Not somewhere that was healthy to stay under any circumstance.  The prison also was not perfect.  During its operation 26 prisoners escaped.  Of the three-thousand that were there over the years that’s a pretty low number but absolutely not one that looked good on reports or with the neighboring cities.  If prisoners attempted to escape and did not succeed they received the horrid ball and chain to keep them from trying again.  Not a particularly comfortable way to try to walk around.

So, while you are checking out Arizona tourism offerings, consider when you dreamed that you wanted to be the bad cowboy – I bet you did not know all that stuff.  You just thought that you could ride into a city on your trotting horse, knock over a bank and then ride out again and go hideout at someplace nice and clean and spend the money.  Not so.  Normally the horses that the outlaws had were pretty skanky, no time to feed them properly and groom them, too rushed staying ahead of the law.  To rob a bank you had to have a pretty good plan and might very well get shot or caught.  If you were caught you were off to Yuma (or hung.)  Living it up with the money, if you got away, probably wasn’t in the cards either because where could you go that there wouldn’t be opinions about how a unemployed trail rider got the money.  There may have been some that did not fit that sterotype, but probably not many.  Probably not the style of life you probably really wanted to live.

The Yuma prison did accomplish some good things with prisoners incarcerated there.  Many of the prisoners learned to read and write during their stay.  The prison actually had a small library and the prisoners received medical care, limited as it was at the time.  Enjoy this Arizona attraction video:

The prison was used until 1907 (for a whole thirty-one years) before it became too small, overcrowded and eventually turned over for other uses.  It has now continued life as a school; free lodging for transients and families who became homeless by the Great Depression. Although it wasn’t someplace you would long to live at, it was absolutely better than having no place to use for shelter.  A few of the local Yuma residents decided that it was a free source for building materials and thus over the years some of the buildings were totally destroyed and now are not part of the historical park today.

Today the Yuma Territorial State Historical Park is used to host a variety of special events during the year such as the Gathering of the Gunfighters in January which you should consider attending.  It could be a lot of fun.  If you are there at another time of year you may desire to take one of the Haunted Tours during October.  There are also Old West re-enactments performed each Sunday from October through April.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

No related experiences.

Tagged with: • • •

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!