alcatraz - san francisco, jan 2010

Alcatraz, an island located in the San Francisco bay,

1.5 miles offshore from San Francisco, California.

Often referred to as the Rock, the small island early on served as a lighthouse, a military fortification, military prison and a Federal Bureau of Prisons federal prisons till 1963.

Later in 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreational area and received land marking designations in 1976 & 1986.

Today, the island is a historic park operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to tours.

20 November 1969, a group of Native Americans from many different tribes

(many individual Native Americans relocated to the Bay area

under the Federal Indian reorganization act of 1934)

occupied the island, and proposed an education center,

ecology center and cultural center.

During its 29 years of operation the penitentiary

claimed no prisoners had ever successfully escaped.

36 prisoners were involved with in attempts,

two men trying twice;

23 were caught,

six were shot and killed during their attempt,

and three were lost at sea and never found.

The most violent occurred on 2 May 1946

when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the

so called Battle of Alcatraz.

11 June 1962, Franklin Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin

successfully carried out one of the most intricate escapes ever devised.

The prisoners chiseled away moisture-damaged concrete

from around an air vent leading to a corridor that was unguarded.

Using tools such as metal spoon soldered

with silver from a dime and electric drill

improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor.

The noise was disguised by accordions played during music hour,

and their progress was concealed by false walls which,

in the dark recesses of the cells fooled the guards.

The escape route led up to a fan vent;

the fan and motor had been removed and replaced with steel grille,

leaving a shaft large enough for a prisoner to climb through.

Stealing a carborundum cord from the prison workshop,

the prisoners had removed the rivets from the grille

and substituted dummy rivets made from soap.

The escapees also constructed an inflatable raft from

several stolen raincoats for the trip to the mainland.

Leaving pa pier-mac he dummies in their cells with

stolen human hair from the barber shop for hair, they escaped.

The official investigation by FBI was assisted by Allen West,

who was also part of the escapees group but was left behind

(West's false wall kept slipping so he held it into place

with cement which set; when the Anglin brothers accelerated the schedule,

West desperately chipped away the wall, but by the time he did, his companions were gone).

Articles belonging to the prisoners

(including plywood paddles and parts of the raincoat raft)

were located on a nearby Angel Island, and

the official report of the escape says the prisoners drowned

while trying to reach mainland in the cold waters of the bay.

The notorious inmates:

Robert "Bird man of Alcatraz" Stroud
manslaughter (public and prison)
17 years









Al Capone
master manipulator
4.5 years








George "Machine Gun" Kelly
robbery and murder
17 years








Alvin "Creepy Karpis" Karpowicz
(nicknamed creepy for his sinister smile)
alliance with Barker gang, Creepy Karpis was the last Public Enemy to be taken
burglary, car theft, bank robbery, kidnapping
26 years








Ellsworth Raymond Johnson @ Bumpy @ The Godfather of Harlem
African American gangster, numbers operator, bootlegger, racketeer
9 years









Arthur R "doc" Barker
kidnapping - Barker Gang
4 years
(shot and killed during escape attempt)

The penitentiary was closed on 21 March 1963.
It was closed because it was more expensive to operate than other prisons
(nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta).








Half a century of salt water saturation had severely eroded the buildings,
and the bay was being badly polluted by the sewage from the approximately
250 inmates and 60 Bureau of Prisons families on the island.








The United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois,
a traditional land bound prison,
opened that same year to serve as a replacement for Alcatraz.