When you were young growing up did you dream to play cowboys? Perhaps you wanted to be the bad guy instead of the hero with the white hat. One of the places you probably heard a little about was the Yuma Territorial Prison State Park. Here the “really bad guys” were taken to serve out their time in prison. Not only were they prisoners but they were also forced to construct their own cells!
The detention facility opened for business on July 1, 1875 with 7 inmates. Those seven had been the ones building the prison. Now, the prison was not picky about who was there, because there were also twenty-nine female prisoners that were incarcerated at the prison. TB was a medical problem for the prisoners, 111 died during their incarceration in Yuma Territorial Prison. Not someplace that was healthy to be under any circumstance. The prison also wasn’t perfect. Throughout it’s heritage 26 inmates escaped. Of the 3,000 that were imprisoned over the years that’s a very low occurence but certainly not one that looked sharp on reports or with the nearby towns. If they attempted to escape and didn’t succeed they received the painful 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 vacations offerings, remember when you dreamed that you wanted to be the bad cowboy - I bet you didn’t know all that stuff. You just thought that you could ride into a town on your trotting horse, knock over a bank and then ride out quickly and go stay at someplace nice and rich and spend the loot. Not so. Normally the horses that the bandits had were pretty skanky, no ability to feed them well and groom them, too rushed staying ahead of the law. To knock off a bank you needed to have a really good plan and might very well get shot or caught. If you were caught you were sentenced to Yuma (or hung.) Living it up with the money, if you got away, probably wasn’t in the deck either since where could you go that there wouldn’t be questions about how a unemployed trail bum got the money. There are some that did not fit that mold, but probably not many. Not the type of lifestyle you probably really wanted to live.
The Yuma prison did accomplish some positive things with some of those incarcerated there. Quite a few of the prisoners learned to read and write during their stays. It actually had a real library and the prisoners got health care, such as it was at the time. Enjoy this Arizona vacation video:
The territorial prison was operated until 1907 (for an entire 31 years) before it was too small, overcrowded and eventually turned over to other uses. It has now continued life as a school; free lodging for transients and families who became homeless by the Great Depression. Although it wasn’t a place you would long to live in, it was certainly better than having no facility to go for shelter. Some of the local Yuma people thought that it was a low cost source for building supplies and so over the years many of the buildings were essentially destroyed and so are not part of the historical park today.
Today the Yuma Territorial State Historical Park is used to host a variety of special events during the year including the Gathering of the Gunfighters in January which you should consider attending. It will be a lot of fun. If you are there at another time of year you may want to experience one of the Haunted Tours during October. There are also Old West re-enactments performed each Sunday from October through April.
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