Arizona Attraction Video

While you were a child growing up did you want to play cowboys?  Maybe you wanted to be the bad guy instead of the hero with the white hat.  One of the places you probably dreamed a little about was the Southwest Arizona Yuma Prison.  Here the “really bad guys” were taken to serve out their time in prison. Not only were they inmates but they were also forced to build their own cells!

The prison opened for business on July 1, 1875 with seven prisoners.  Those 7 had been the inmates building the prison.  Now, the prison was not particular about who was there, because there were also twenty-nine ladies that were detained at the prison.  TB was a medical problem for the prisoners, one-hundred-eleven died during their incarceration at Yuma Territorial Prison.  Not somewhere that was healthy to stay under any circumstance.  The prison certainly wasn’t perfect.  Throughout its operation 26 prisoners escaped.  Of the three-thousand that were imprisoned over the years that may be a pretty low occurence but probably not one that looked sharp on reports or with the nearby cities.  If they attempted to escape and didn’t succeed they got a horrid ball and chain to prevent them from trying again.  Not a particularly comfortable way to try to walk around.

So, while you are checking out Arizona vacation offerings, think about when you dreamed that you wanted to be the bad cowboy - I bet you didn’t know all that stuff.  You probably thought that you could ride into a town on your trotting horse, rob a bank and then ride out again and go stay at someplace nice and rich and spend the loot.  Not so.  Usually the horses that the outlaws had were pretty skanky, no time to feed them well and groom them, too rushed staying ahead of the law.  To rob a bank you needed to have a pretty good plan and might very well get shot or caught.  If you were caught you were sent to Yuma (or worse.)  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 rider had the money.  There may have been some that did not fit that sterotype, but probably not many.  Probably not the style of life you probably really wanted to live.

The prison did accomplish some good things with inmates living there.  Quite a few of the inmates learned to read and write during their stays.  The prison actually had a small library and the prisoners received medical care, such as it was at the time.  Enjoy this Arizona attraction video:

The territorial prison was used until 1907 (for a whole 31 years) before it was too small, overcrowded and eventually turned over for other uses.  It has a continued life as a school; low cost housing for transients and families left homeless by the Great Depression. Although it was not a place you would long to live at, it was absolutely better than having no facility to go for shelter.  Some of the local Yuma people thought that it was a free source for building supplies and so over the years many of the buildings were essentially demolished and now are not part of the historical park today.

Today the Yuma Territorial State Historical Park is used to host several special events throughout the year such as the Gathering of the Gunfighters in January which you should consider attending.  It will be a lot of fun.  If you arrive at another time of year you may desire to experience one of the Haunted Tours during October.  There are always Old West re-enactments done each Sunday from October through April.