Colorado Experience: Imprisonment

For roughly 150 years, Colorado prisons have held some of the greatest outlaw stories in history, from the lawless West to the toughest prison in America today. Supermax. The state's relationship with crime and punishment began even before statehood and includes a cannibal, an 11-year-old murderer who escapes from prison, and one of the most ruthless guards in recent times throughout The First Colorado prison, nicknamed Old Mac's, remains a beautifully preserved testament to how we have built the walls of justice from the state's first prison to today's prison. Valley Canyon City has always been the place to call home whether you're a criminal behind bars or someone who keeps those bars locked walks into Colorado's first prison for a rare glimpse of law and order from the inside.

It turns out these walls can talk. This program was possible thanks to history. Colorado State Historical Fund supporting projects across the state to preserve protect and interpret the history of Colorado's architectural and archaeological treasures Colorado State Historical Fund create the future honor the past with support from the Denver Public Library history of Colorado and the Colorado Film, Television and Media Office with additional support from these organizations and Viewers like you thank you after gold was discovered in the Colorado Territory in 1858, tens of thousands of men flooded the West with Colorado was interested in becoming a state. that they needed to represent themselves to the United States of America as a legal place one of the things that Congress did was note that prisons are part of To understand at that time what a civilized society was, we have to look at the creation of a prison territorial and a broader vision of what you have as a unit of American society that is a civilized place and shows that ambitious and reputable people want to live. there, so you should start going to university, you should start choosing your capital and establishing it in a very respectable way, that this will be a place of solid and sober government, a prison is part of that when we think about why the inhabitants of Colorado wanted a major prison facility in Canyon City or elsewhere in the closing years of the 19th century.

Some of that has to do with local needs. We can't assume that incarceration was just what people always did to respond to crime or lawlessness or disturbing behavior, the first territorial governor, William Gilpin, is one of those people who says: there are too many men in this population, a mining community, there are many more men than women, it is unbalanced, too many men separated from their families, this is going to be messy this is going to be a threat to property this is going to shake us in every way so we must take a stand against this anarchy there is a deliberation process in the United States Philadelphia in New York where they focus on that I am saying what we should do as a society when people have gone outside our limits and have behaved in a way that we want them to stop doing, you want them to give up and not do it anymore, it was an important part of the portfolio of applications to become one of the United States for Colorado to have a correctional facility of the sophistication or vision that state law would keep that state more back east had developed in the previous decades the federal government moved into the Rocky Mountain states establishing prisons simply to bring order to the landscape Congress then passes a law to support the creation of territorial prisons Colorado is quick to the draw and comes into action very quickly leads other territories and proposes to Congress that they should have a territorial prison a Canyon City prosecutor and the territorial legislature Thomas Macon led the campaign to Locate the new Colorado prison in Canyon City happily for Macon's ambitions.

Planning for the first prison occurred around the same time as the debate over where the state capital would be located. I was in a position to do some vow exchanges. Denver wants the capital wants gold. the capital so Thomas plays a role by saying "I will help Denver" and then if he helps Denver and many other people then he will have to do something for him once Denver reaches the capital then Thomas Macon has many cards to play. say that southern Colorado deserves that prison so Canyon City gets the territorial prison another supporter of building a penitentiary in Fremont County Jonathan Draper donated a 25-acre parcel of land for the new prison so that supporters seeking economic opportunities now had a location and a beginning 1868 there The plans are dried and they are reduced to meet the money available and then they look for contractors who will accept that and they choose among them and they make some of them withdraw and give up and then the real beginning of construction, so it's quite a production to get it up and running, first prisoner in 1871, so it was pretty quick.

The original cell was built with stone that was actually quarried just behind the facility and the inmates are the ones who built the wall. I think it's one of the most striking things for people. Those who visit the Colorado Museum prisons, for example, to see photographs of the territory, which is a stone building in its earliest form without a wall, purposely did not put a wall around the initial cell because they thought that most the inmates would be working. In fact, in the ranches there was a sign that said return at sunset or the doors would be closed.

The limits of the prison were much more permeable than they are now and in fact many inmates or prisoners as they were called in those times returned and left. to the city since the trustees had jobs in the city, but that didn't work out well because they were causing chaos. In fact, they had an escape early on where the inmates overpowered the guard, grabbed some weapons, and ran like crazy through Fremont County. The public was outraged by 1875, a wall suddenly seemed like a very good idea and the first one was built around the complex when they were talking about what the cost of the wall would be and the labor it would involve, they knew they already had a quarry, so we use the stone from that same quarry, we have this beautiful stone wall and on that stone wall we have several stones that have engraved along with inmate numbers, we have a hand with a heart in the center, we have a pair of points of arrow people who wrote their names and numbers on the stone once the wall was up a very interesting variety of lawbreakers ended up in the Colorado State Penitentiary, including Alfred Packer in the winter of 1874.

Packer and a group of Searchers had found themselves trapped in a desperate situation. due to bad weather in the San Juan Mountains Packer was the only one who survived his companions were found murdered in reality he never confessed to the murder of his companions but Packer admitted to cannibalizing them what has not been said about Alfred Packer was originally convicted of murder and He was sentenced to death, but there was a small loophole so they had to retry him instead of bringing him up on another murder charge. He had already admitted to killing one of the miners.

They convicted him of involuntary manslaughter, for which he was not in prison. for cannibalism, not murder but manslaughter, although the Colorado State Penitentiary has normally been reserved for adult criminals like Packer in 1893. The 11-year-old convicted murderer, Anton Wood, was considered too dangerous to be committed to a reform school , so they put him behind bars. Canyon City was 10 years old when he committed the crime of murder that he admitted to at age 11 when he was incarcerated at the Colorado State Penitentiary, believe it or not, it is actually a success story. The inmates took care of him when he left the prison.

He was 23 years old, spoke fluent 3 different languages, played the violin and piano so well that he even taught other people how to play. One of his paintings was on display at the World's Fair. He was taken to Aurora, New York, to an artists' commune where He taught other people to play the violin He fell in love with a young woman he met on the Hudson River while he was drawing She ended up being the daughter of a retired federal They got married They moved to Minneapolis where he evidently never had any interactions According to the law, when the prison First opened in 1871, the staff was small, one warden and six guards, and at that time the guards mainly handled the keys rather than the prisoners.

One of the starkest contrasts between contemporary and historical incarceration practices is the role of correctional officers in the prison. In the beginning, prison officers tended to be elderly, it was not a particularly stressful environment, they were called "turnkeys", they are seen in photographs next to people dressed in stripes, that is not so true now in a world where There is university education for prison officers. They are now trained to be not quite, but almost, social workers in the sense that they support various types of rehabilitation programs. Part of their role is not only to keep everyone safe but also to support the growth and rehabilitation of offenders, even if they are in prison.

At the end of the 19th century, the guards were not worried about reforming anyone, they had another problem: the overcrowding of the convicts outnumbered their quarters. Authorities added more buildings to the original prison site, but it was still woefully inadequate, especially for an influx of female prisoners. The Colorado Territorial Prison opened in 1871 and from that year until about 1900 there were only about 99 women incarcerated there, but in 1884 officials decided they needed a separate space for female prisoners, so six cells were built above the holding area. laundry and utility room within the prison walls. A separate building with about 40 cells was built just outside the prison walls and was enclosed within its own walls in 1908.

An additional building was built for female prisoners, this had 40 cells and space for kitchens, laundries and bathrooms during the territorial period. For several days the prison was accepting prisoners from other territories and states because some of those places did not have the facilities to incarcerate some of the women accused of more serious crimes. Female prisoners were actually punished disproportionately in terms of their male counterparts. Especially during the 19th century, during the Victorian era, anything that a woman did that was somewhat contradictory to the ideal of femininity was actually punished quite harshly and especially women of color, women in economically disadvantaged situations, women with little education they really felt the brunt of this type of social judgment beyond the increase in prisoners the lack of adequate housing for all the convicts caused a constant state of overcrowding in 1929 some of the prisoners decided it was intolerable and mutinied led by the Convicted murderer Danny Daniels a group of convicts demanded director Effie Crawford would not accept, so the National Guard was brought in to try to put an end to the chaos.

In the end, it was the bloodiest prison rebellion in Colorado history, but just three years later, in 1932, there was a new warden in town and wardens have been important figures. in Colorado history and I think the story of mid-20th century guards is a great way to think about the history of incarceration in Colorado. Roy Best was such an amazing character, a larger than life kind of person, a tough person in many ways, but in other ways he was a very warm person in the sense that he accepted disabled inmates into his circle of affection. There was a prisoner who was mentally disabled and had committed a capital crime.

They were going to execute him. The best thing he did was help him and he really tried. To see if he could reduce that sentence with Roy Best as director, life in prison could be dramatic, practically taken from a movie. A suspenseful incident occurred in December 1947, when convicted murderer James Mad Dog Sherbondy led 11 other inmates on a daring escape. Two inmates were murdered. and the others were recaptured, but that was not the end of the story. Hollywood came calling in January 1948. He really thought escaping was fascinating. He wanted to show it in a movie. They constructed the film Canyon City as the first docudrama, so they asked permission to film inside.

The prison is an active prison, so they had to talk to Roy better and the story goes that Roy Bass said: I'll let you film in the prison as long as you can play me.myself in the movie. Well, that was evidently agreed upon because The inmates filmed inside the prison were some of the extras and Roy best played himself in the movie. In fact, they flew it to New York City for the world premiere in June 1948. The film could have been called a docudrama, but it didn't document some. Despite Roy's best management style, he was a strong advocate of corporal punishment to keep rule breakers in line.

He best used a device called the old gray mare. The criminals were bent over an easel, hence the nickname of the old gray mare. They tied them up and whipped them. a leather strap studded with taxes female prisoners were not subject to the old gray mare in the 1930s attitudes towards female convicts had softened Roy better even wanted to build them a new facility in 1935 the Colorado women's prison was built an entity Separated next to the prison walls this building had 30 cells on the main floor and then a basement with laundry, kitchen, dining area, you can see the house as a women's incarceration center, dude maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration , but the house is not and then you turn around and look at the big wall that separates the men's prison from the rest of the world and see that there is only a low stone wall around the women's prison, the assumption is that the women are not to escape.

I think the assumption behind that building in the 1930s was that the women there because they were damaged their criminality was virtually medicalized it was a disorder and what this relatively healthy house type environment was going to do was return them to common femininity and current. The women did some gardening, but much of their energy was directed toward cooking textiles, sewing, and making men's underwear. However, as the needs of prisoners changed over time, so did the facilities. 1988, after a new modern women's penitentiary was built, the former women's prison was converted into a museum, a monument to crime and punishment, carefully preserved in the rehabilitation of the prison to a museum.

We kept all these cells there, the original cells, the bars on the windows are the original bars on the windows, the kitchen is intact down to the laundry room, they are exactly the same appliances that were there when it was a functioning prison in 1935, the plan floor plan is basically the same the building is painted an institutional green which looks really very similar to how it looked when it was built in 1935, almost like going back in time, the architectural style, the Mediterranean style, is really different for that period of time, so the preservation of the prison and the rehabilitation of an active prison to a museum is really important preservation. of the museum really allows you to imagine what it would have been like to be imprisoned there.

The

experience

of being locked inside this prison largely depended on who the warden was. Directors Wayne Patterson and Harry Tinsley had a distinctly lighter touch than Roy and Tinsley. I had a different feeling that explicit rehabilitation that humane commitment rather than work and punishment, as had been the best philosophy, would bring people back to the outside world and some said then and others would still say it was too kind , who was too kind, who was too kind. His compassion for the people he was working with is ineffective, his sense that his true goal was rehabilitation is vivid, and there are people alive today in Canyon City who remember that guardian ship and remember the extraordinary shift toward that model of rehabilitation that Wayne Patterson continued in that pattern and, in general, his policy was also rehabilitative and educational.

Wayne Patterson definitely wanted people to know about the prison. He encouraged the people of Canyon City to learn about it by offering tours of the Colorado State Penitentiary throughout his tenure as warden until mid-term. -Visitors in the 1970s could enter the prison and actually walk through the cells and really see what it was like. He believed that the more people knew about the prison, the more they would support what was happening there, just down the hill from the old prison steps. the deputy director's house built in 1901 with stone from the same quarry that supplied the prison.

The Queen Anne-style home features a commanding three-story tower overlooking any problem. The house is outside the prison walls if something were to happen. Inside the walls they couldn't take the vice principal hostage, but they were close enough to respond to any problems that might occur. The deputy warden's house is definitely an iconic building here in Canyon City, many people think it is the warden's house because it is very decorative you will see the stained glass windows you will see the stone creatures that are sitting in front of the original porch the Department of Corrections used the house since mid From the 1970s until 2007 as housing for juvenile offenders and administrative offices it is now empty and in need of major restoration and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 due to the architectural significance of its Queen and her style.

There are other examples of this architecture in the Canyon City area, but this house is unusual with its oversized tower and twin towers. lions adorning the main walkway is on the list of most endangered places in Colorado. We are working very hard with the Department of Corrections and the state to try to save the building. The bones are good. It just needs a little TLC to preserve the legacy of Colorado's first prison. It is considered an essential part of preserving Colorado history. The original west wall still stands and several gun towers built in the 1920s remain overseeing what is still an active penitentiary.

They are beautiful quarry stones. You can see where the original windows were and when they were opened. They added the Bob wire and then the barbed wire, they extended those towers to make them taller. The Son of Springs Tower is very interesting simply because it is beautiful and is no longer used because we no longer have a spring that the general public would go to in the first place. In the 19th century there was a soda spring and people used to come from all over to drink from this spring and it is so close to the prison that they built a tower and that tower was known as the Soda Spring Tower, so a officer used to stand on that tower. to make sure the general public didn't try to come to the prison land we lost that spring in the '70s when Highway 50 was widened.

Colorado's original prison no longer stands alone on a hill, the canyon town has grown into this stone fortress and there are now many other places for criminals to reside in the area, ten other state and federal facilities have joined the old Macs in what is rightfully known as Prison Valley. The most important things about prisons are the questions we don't ask. It's easy to see what it is. There it is not so easy to see what is behind the scenes. Who is in prison is the most important thing about prisons and I think we learned that by looking at them over time we want to know why people are there so we can understand how they are.

Being better supported or my better re-entry into society and also preventing other people from having the kind of

experience

that led them there. Incarceration is such a vivid element of the Colorado landscape. My God. Florence Canyon City. Wow, there's a lot of incarceration there. Fremont County. It is still a place where a significant percentage of the population are prisoners and an even larger portion of the population are people who work for the prisons in the late 19th century. Legislator Thomas Macon had a vision for his hometown of Macon's push to build the state's first prison in Canyon City that proved to be very productive in his time and ours.