"Alcatraz" -
Archaic Spanish for "Pelican." A shortening of "La Isla de los Alcatraces," the name given by Juan Manuel de Ayala when he landed there in 1775. The island is nondescript, then white-colored because it was covered in pelican dung. It was not humility that kept Ayala from attaching his own, more graceful name.
Alcatraz is in the middle of California's San Francisco Bay. It was most famously a prison, but its history goes wider than that. First it was a lighthouse station. Then a military installation. Then military prison, then federal prison, then point of confluence for shelter-seeking Native American tribes (see above). "Out of the way" is the theme here. And then. Then there are the ghosts. The now-defunct prison, with its cells smaller in area than some dinner tables, has enough congealed sorrow left to make you believe anything. Sadness does that.
Seeing no use in a dung-sheathed protuberance of the seafloor, the Mexican government gave the island free-of-charge to developer Julian Workman in the summer of 1846 with the condition that he build a lighthouse on it (you can see it in the old pictures). Astute readers will note that this was some years before the US claimed California, then a northern extension of Mexico. After the US annexed that coastline, taking the island at the cost of three grand and a legal battle, military personnel saw the strategic potential in the steep-walled, wave-battered crag.
In 1850, the US Army installed a citadel on the island. On? Into. It was built with one level below ground to serve as a point of cover during battle. The new military installation was to work in tandem with two other fortifications, one built on each lip of the bay, to defend the inlet from the growing Confederate threat (gold rush etc.) The hundred cannons the Army subsequently put in - too many even to activate concurrently - made Alcatraz the most fortified military complex on the west coast. That the cannons weren't fired a single time in battle seems a fitting, if subtle, indication that the island was destined for a quieter intensity.
And here shit getteth interesting.
Because the island saw little action, the below-ground level doubled as a barracks for military prisoners, mostly Confederate sympathizers. In 1909 the island realized its destiny, in a small way, when the citadel was demolished and replaced with a dedicated military prison, built by the very men who would lie captive inside it.
With this work I hope to bring that ideal one small step nearer, but no one realizes so well as I how far short of my goal I have fallen. The road stretches into the dim future, far beyond the possible accomplishments of any single lifetime, but if in this I have been able to point the direction and inspire others to carry on from the point where I have left off, I shall consider my efforts worthwhile.
Robert F. Stroud — The Birdman of Alcatraz
June 1, 1937
Stroud's Digest on the Diseases of Birds
The words of a man in prison. There is a certain reaching quality to them, isn't there? A certain looking-outward?
The Birdman was one of many famous prisoners to live on the island of Pelicans, along with, of course, Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelley. A much-up-played aspect to the prison's inmate roster is that it was made up of felons too unruly to be held captive at other facilities. The idea was to make it a kind of boot camp for the prison population — imagine for a minute how that must be, when the federal prison system ships you off because they can't discipline you. These days, it gets people on the ferry. Back then, it was some shit heavy enough to send you diaper-shopping.
Interestingly, Alcatraz's (Alcatraz' ?) modest capacity of roughly 600 was never met, and inmates at other prisons were known to request transfer there. Hollywood makes a true monster of the place (it was a hellhole, to be sure) but, like many foreboding things in history, its reputation took on a kind of reverse black-hole quality by which it was augmented under its own weight.
The cells? Tiny. 5x9. None of them against perimeter walls — not that it mattered, since the island met the Pacific in a steep wall in all directions and the ocean itself, struggling to fit into the bay, rolled and crashed like a river. List of daily routines? Reads like a military boot camp itinerary where everyone's looking to kill each other. Wake up. Shave. Clean your cell. Stand in silence. Breakfast. Eating utensils counted. Work. Eight-minute smoke break. Lunch. Work. Dinner. Eating utensils counted. Counts, validations. Not a single free moment until lights-out. This is how you break a spirit: by applying shape to it.
The hole needs little introduction. Lightless concrete box with rats. A drain in the floor very concisely sets the tone for the next 24 hours.
By way of sporting, the inmates were allowed to build a baseball field on a plateau left over from previously abandoned building efforts. They even had uniforms — quaint. Boxing matches, in which participants were determined by guards (how many grudges do you think were dissolved there?) Were held periodically, and were a worthy spectacle not only for the inmates but for civvies willing to take the ferry over.
Unsurprisingly, escape was attempted.
We're going to define "escape" not as "got out of the cell," "Got on the water," but as "Got to the California coast alive."
And that — while attempted, even approached — was never accomplished.
Officially.
I've known folks who've been in prison. They're easy to spot, because the ingenuity they developed circumventing the rules inside never quite burned out. Ever made a birthday cake out of twinkies and cocoa paste? Cooked a brick of ramen noodles under a cushion with the warmth of your ass? You don't think of these things. And these guys on Alcatraz, they got elaborate.
Most of the fourteen escape attempts were your predictable take-hostages-and-run-for-the-ocean fare. But one attempt, involving a tunnel chiseled out of concrete and papier-mâché dummies (yes) holds the memory in a particular rapture.
In a utility corridor behind the cells of cellblock B there exists, still, a tunnel, chiseled out of the water-softened concrete from one of the cells. The tools? A drill made of a spoon veneered with soldered silver running on a vacuum-cleaner motor. Work was done during music hour, under the drone of accordions. In their path, they left false walls and attachments (rivets made of soap is almost cartoonish, but true). For the life raft: raincoats. The dummies stood guard in the cells while the work was done. The talents of Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin would have been better-applied some decades later in a monitor-bedecked room overlooking a launchpad, but no matter. Shreds of the raincoats they'd used as life rafts were found on Angel Island; the men themselves, unheard of thence.
Which would be more or less the point. The ocean is rough, but allow an amateur researcher a flight of fancy.
Re: Ghosts.
It's a place of legend. Of course there are ghost stories. We think of emotion as a substance that leaves the body and survives. In this way, sorrow becomes an imprint.
Even before the prison, Alcatraz island was a subject of folklore. Native Americans avoided it, believing it to hold evil spirits. And once the prison was built, the deaths didn't help.
The most chilling story comes from the hole. It goes thus: an inmate, locked there for punishment, started screaming a few seconds after the light went out that there were glowing eyes in there with him. What better way to get the guards to open the cell? The guards obviously knew as much, so they left him. Found him the next morning, dead, with a hand-shaped bruise around his throat. Autopsy revealed that the strangulation wasn't self-inflicted. And the next morning? The guards counted an extra prisoner.
The glowing eyes made other appearances, none of them causing death. As in any haunted place, there are cold spots, and moaning from inside the walls. Regiments of soldiers sometimes appear. There are crashes. The old lighthouse itself, built by Julian Workman and long since demolished, is said to appear in the fog and shine its light on the island with a whistling sound. The paranormal experts go in. They feel things.
Today Alcatraz is a US National Park. You can take a ferry over, take in the sights, learn the history, buy postcards.
Prison's historical specs:
- 1775: Sighted by the Europeans
- 1846: Lighthouse appears
- 1848: Acquired by the US
- 1858: First Army garrison completed
- 1868: Designated long-term facility for military prisoners
- 1907: Designated US Military prison
- 1912: Main cell block completed
- 1934: Graduated to Federal prison
- 1963: Penitentiary Closed
The US National Park Service provides a fair resource for those wishing to travel to the island.
Sources
Wikipedia. "Alcatraz Island." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island.
The Shadow Lands. "Alcatraz." http://theshadowlands.net/famous/alcatraz.htm.
Alcatraz History. http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/mainpg.htm.
US National Park Service. "Alcatraz Island." http://www.nps.gov/alca/.