Alcatraz Island

Alcatraz Island Map

The map below shows where Alcatraz Island is regarding San Francisco and San Francisco Bay.

Fig. 2 - Alcatraz Island on a Map

Alcatraz Island Prison

Alcatraz Island opened as a prison in 1934. James A. Johnson was the first warden and was known for being tough. He had several construction projects built to better fortify the prison. Watch towers were constructed, the cells were not on perimeter walls, and remote-controlled tear gas canisters were built into the mess hall walls. The waters were considered too dangerous to swim, which only made the fort even more secure.

Fig. 3 - Alcatraz cell block

Inmates weren't sent to Alcatraz after their trials, but if they were badly behaved while in prison. For example, Al Capone still ran his criminal organization while imprisoned in Atlanta, Georgia. Capone was sent to Alcatraz because he wouldn't be able to corrupt the guards or communicate with the outside world.

While Alcatraz as a military prison worked to rehabilitate small offenders, Alcatraz the federal penitentiary didn't. Alcatraz had strict rules with harsh punishments. While prisoners who behaved could receive rewards like a shorter sentence, punishments weren't equal to the offense.

Prisoners were put in solitary confinement in small rooms where they could only leave once every seven days to wash. They were confined to completely dark rooms or even locked in iron boxes. Within the first several years of the prison, inmates couldn't talk to each other because Johnson enforced an absolute silence rule. The only time they could talk was during the short three-minute work breaks in the morning and afternoon or during meal times.

Alcatraz Island Escape

Historians argue about whether anyone actually escaped from Alcatraz while it was a federal penitentiary. We do know that when it was a military prison in 1918, four men escaped via a make-shift raft. There were 14 escapes attempts throughout Alcatraz's history, thirty-six inmates in total. Twenty-three were recaptured, two drowned, six were shot and killed, and five were presumed drowned, but their bodies were never recovered.

Four Men Who Escaped Via Raft

In 1918, Herbert Koenig, 21 years, Paul N. White, 23 years, Fritz K. Isell, 20, and Andy Armen, 23, all escaped while the prison celebrated Thanksgiving. After the festivities, when the inmates were discovered to be missing, guards were dispatched on patrol boats to search for the men.

All that was discovered was the wreckage of the boat. The men were assumed to have drowned, but the following year, Herbert Koenig was recaptured. He revealed that all the men had survived, but went their separate ways. White, Isell, and Armen were never recaptured.

Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe

In 1937, Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe worked in the workshop. They used the tools to slowly saw through the iron bars of the window and eventually escaped. They escaped during a thick fog and tried to swim the distance between Alcatraz and the San Francisco shore.

Fig. 4 - Alcatraz arial view

Warden Johnson said that it was improbable that the men made it to shore, the tide was high, and he doubted anyone picked them up on a boat. He determined that the men drowned, and their bodies were never recovered. A reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle reportedly interviewed the two and said that they were alive and well in South America. This report was never verified.

Alcatraz Island Facts

In 1963, Alcatraz Island ceased to be a prison. This happened for similar reasons as the shutdown of the military prison on the island. The island wasn't self-sufficient and didn't have fresh water, which meant that the government had to supply all of its food and water by boat. The prison held less than one percent of the inmates in the system and only had 275 inmates, at most, at one time. The cost didn't justify the results.

Another issue was that it was inhuman. In the 1960s, there was a shift in the public perception of what a prison should be. They didn't want prisons to just hold inmates, but to reform them, and give them a second chance at life. So, what happened to the island once Alcatraz was abandoned?

The Occupation of Alcatraz by Indigenous People

In 1969, the American Indian Center in San Francisco burned down. The Indigenous people who used the building needed a new place to gather. They realized that under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, Indigenous people could claim any abandoned government facility. Alcatraz fit that description.

Fig. 5 - Photo of a graffitied sign during the Native American occupation of Alcatraz

In 1969, Richard Oakes of the Mohawk Indigenous Nation lead the "Indians of All Tribes" in their claim on Alcatraz, where they lived until 1971. They protested the treatment of Indigenous peoples, and how the worst land was given to them for reservations. The Indians of All Tribes sent a manifesto to the government addressed to the "Great White Father and All of His Children" which discussed the poor conditions on reservations.

They were going to build a school, a cultural center, and a museum on the island. Oakes left the island when his eleven-year-old stepdaughter died tragically. She fell down three stories through a stairwell.

The movement had public support, so the government couldn't directly intervene until the public forgot about it. When they did, the government shut off electricity and water to the island. Not long after that, a mysterious fire started and burned down much of the property. By this point, there were less than twenty indigenous people still on the island. Armed federal marshals escorted them off it.

The occupation influenced the government's decision to return 48,000 acres plus the Blue Lake back to the Taos people in 1970. It also made them realize that Indigenous people needed to be in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Indigenous people still return to Alcatraz to remember the occupation.

Alcatraz Island

Today, Alcatraz Island is a National Park. If you tour it, you will see the cramped cells that the prisoners called home, the mess hall where they ate, and even the graffiti left by the Indians of All Tribes. Alcatraz has a long and dark history, it is shrouded in mystery, and has kept the attention of movies and video games. It was a fort, military and federal prison, the home to indigenous people, and a national park.