Southwestern Arizona Yuma Prison – Southwestern, Arizona A Great Arizona Vacation Location
While you were a child growing up did you want to play cowboys? Perhaps you wanted to be the bad guy rather than the hero wearing the white hat. One of the places you certainly dreamed a little about was the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historical Park. Where the “really bad guys” were sent to serve out their time in prison. Not only were they inmates but they were also forced to build their own prison blocks!
The detention facility opened to business on July 1, 1875 with seven prisoners. Those seven had been the inmates building the prison. Now, the prison was not particular about who was incarcerated, because there were also twenty-nine ladies that were detained at the prison. TB was a problem for the prisoners, one-hundred-eleven died during their time at Yuma Territorial Prison. Not someplace that was healthy to be under any circumstance. The prison also was not perfect. Throughout its history 26 inmates escaped. Of the 3,000 that were imprisoned over the years that is a pretty low number but absolutely not one that looked sharp on reports or with the nearby towns. If they attempted to escape and did not succeed they received a 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, remember when you decided that you wanted to be the bad cowboy – I’m sure you didn’t know all that stuff. You just thought that you could ride into a town on your beautiful horse, rob a bank and then ride out quickly and go stay at someplace nice and clean and spend the loot. Not so. Normally the horses that the outlaws had were pretty skanky, no ability to feed them properly and groom them, too busy running from the law. To rob a bank you had to have a pretty good plan and might very well get shot or killed. If you were caught you were shipped to Yuma (or hung.) Living it up with the money, if you got away, probably wasn’t in the cards either because where would you go that there wouldn’t be concerns about how a dirty trail bum got the money. There are some that did not fit that mold, but probably not many. Probably not the type of lifestyle you probably really wanted to live.
The prison did accomplish some good things with inmates incarcerated there. Quite a few of the prisoners learned to read and write during their stays. It actually had a small library and the inmates got 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; low cost lodging for hobos and families left homeless during the Great Depression. Although it wasn’t a place you would long to live in, it was absolutely better than having no place to go for shelter. A few of the local Yuma residents thought that it was a low cost source for building supplies and thus over the years some of the buildings were essentially demolished and so are not part of the historical park today.
Today the Yuma Territorial State Historical Park is used to host several special events during the year such as the Gathering of the Gunfighters in January which you should think about attending. It could be a lot of fun. If you are there at another time of year you may desire to experience one of the Haunted Tours during October. There are always Old West re-enactments performed each Sunday from October through April.
