A Night at the Rock

Alcatraz Island in San Francisco is one of the most celebrated maximum-security prisons in the world. Surrounded by water and almost impossible to escape, the history behind this prison is captivating. Travel enthusiast and photographer, Kelly N. Saunders, takes you on a journey inside the sinister prison walls.

Alcatraz Island sits in the middle of the Bay between San Francisco and Oakland, California and named for its stiff, rocky terrain. Alcatraz Island has been distinguished and recognized in history for several unique reasons. It was home to the first ever functioning lighthouse and United States Army outpost on the West Coast, was a federal military penitentiary and was occupied by the "Indians of All Tribe" alliance at one point. It was operational as a prison for almost thirty years during 1934 to 1963.

Wardens from the entire country were written and told of the prison's facilities and its ability to house their most unruly prisoners. Giving them the opportunity to free space in their own overcrowded prisons, the wardens accepted almost immediately. Some of the very first and most notorious prisoners included Al "Scarface" Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Alvin Karpis, Robert Stroud aka The Birdman of Alcatraz and Floyd Hamilton.
You certainly would not have wanted to be one of the ill-fated souls who ended up spending a lengthy jail term in this prison, but you also would not have wanted to break the rigid rules while being housed there. Alcatraz was built specifically to be America's first and only "escape proof" prison of its day. Having very tiny cells, no windows, a taut and structured daily routine, work days that included hard manual toil and virtually no time to eat or rest, the prisoners were watched, counted and guarded at all times - but unruly and disruptive prisoners were a daily occurrence. The punishments for rebelliousness were strict and callous to the point of being cruel and unusual. Many inmates testing those boundaries often found themselves locked in solitary confinement, losing simple but necessary privileges, hard labor, little or no food and yes, even the ‘ol ball and chain. These punishments had very apropos names as well.

The Strip Cell was an empty, dark dungeon that had one hole in the floor and left the prisoner naked and in complete darkness for approximately one or two days or more depending on the severity of the infraction. There was also The Hole, which was not unlike the Strip Cell in that it was completely empty and completely dark. The Hole also meant that the prisoner would more than likely endure physical and psychological persecution as well. Those who were in the Hole spent approximately 19 to 20 days in complete silence and darkness and those who were lucky enough to survive came out completely insane. Some would come away from these punishments with many ailments, other than being mentally crazed; they would suffer from arthritis, starvation, dehydration, physical weakness and sometimes complete or partial blindness.

Even though many of the inmates had committed heinous crimes and were mass murderers, it's no wonder that several of them tried and failed to run away from these vicious sentences. There is, however, one account of an ingenious, successful plot to escape the inescapable prison. In 1962, Allen West devised a meticulous plan to deceive the guards and build a raft and life vests. West and four others worked for six months creating dummies for the daily head count, chiseling away at the vent shafts in their cells, stealing tools and continuing to work on their master plan. And then after their work was complete, on the night of June 11, 1962 they took off through the vents up to the rooftop, through the ventilator duct, to the edge of the building, climbing down steel pipes alongside the cold, sterile wall, climbing over a twenty-foot fence and then were finally on the shore of the Rock. They pushed off in the raft and were never seen or heard from again. Forty years later the mystery of these men's fate has yet to be discovered. It is unknown whether they met their demise by the icy, rough waters of the bay, if they starved to death or who knows. Out of the large roster of prisoners housed in Alcatraz only thirty-six men tried to escape. Twenty-one of them were captured and sent to suffer the consequences, five men (the Allen West culprits) were missing and have yet to be found, six of them shot dead by the guards and two drowned in the bay.

Robert Stroud was another unruly inmate who, unfortunately for him, never managed to escape. Due to his intolerable behavior he was often a visitor to the Hole and endured many forms of punishment during his seventeen year tenure in Alcatraz. Stroud was sent to Alcatraz after spending almost thirty years in Leavenworth's Federal Penitentiary in Kansas where he was officially known as the "Bird Man". Stroud's interest in birds, mainly canaries, started in Leavenworth. It was there that he wrote two books on the subject (listed below) and also made significant scientific research and remedies on the canary's behavior and ailments. Being that there were no windows in Alcatraz the "bird man" would not have had any live subjects to study. So the tale of the Birdman of Alcatraz was a Hollywood ploy to produce a sell a story that would sound more interesting if tied to the infamous prison.
And last but not least, Al Capone. The Napoli gangster who cultivated organized crime in Chicago and eventually all of America started this life at an early age. Never finishing high school, he relied on his wits and tough lessons learned from his days living in Brooklyn, New York.

Capone became one of the most notorious, high profile masterminds by the time he moved to Chicago. He owned the city and the police and everyone in it, or so he used to brag. Many of the ongoing wars with other crime families were gruesome, bloody and the body count high. Although never convicted for murder, Capone spent eleven years in an Atlanta prison for tax evasion and was eventually transferred to the Rock. After his arrival on the Island his health was declining from a disease known as paretic which was an advanced form of untreated syphilis from his early days as a whorehouse pimp. He was eventually released due to the severe nature of his medical condition and left to die at his family's home in Florida on January 25, 1947.

Once the escape of the West group was published and news traveled that Alcatraz was no longer escape-proof, it lost its long-standing reputation. By the end of the 1940's, prisons were being opened everywhere and Alcatraz lost some of its glamour and notoriety. It was too costly to keep the massive prison open and any thoughts of renovating the deteriorating grounds were lost. The prison finally closed in 1963 and is now owned by the Golden Gate National Recreation department. Daily walkable tours are given and transports are provided by ferry to the Island from the piers on San Francisco's coastal bay area.
Alcatraz is an isolated place that spawns gruesome stories, conjures up horrifying images from your darkest imagination and spooks you to no end. Even though Alcatraz is now a tourist destination and audio walks through its dark corridors are given, it will still haunt you.