Friday September 02, 2016 Today the sky is very black and it looks like it is going to really dump rain on us again. We are in Rawlins, Wyoming at the old Wyoming State Prison museum. It started raining right after we were
inside the prison. We were her early for the , so we had lots of time to read and look at everything they had in the prisons museum. The facility's cornerstone was laid in 1888, but due to difficulties with weather and funding, construction was not completed until 1901. The first inmates were received from the Territorial Prison in Laramie on a cold December day on 1901 The original cell block (cell block A) had no electricity, running water and inadequate heating. Inmates were required to work and were responsible for many day-to-day tasks, including the production of goods in the prison's factory
. Being in Prison back then was no picnic, there was no comfort in your overcrowded 4 man cell and in the winter it was very cold, as they had very little heat and poor food. The prisoners sometimes slept in their clothes, shoes and coats and were still cold. They didn't get many showers and when they did, the water was very cold and they put many inmates in the showers together.. If the inmates had a grudge with someone, the crowded showers made you an easy target.
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| Kent in the gas chamber |
The prison had 3 tiers. A period prior to 1959 all Black inmates were segregated on one tier, (the present tier 5) Their food trays kept separate from the other inmates trays, had the letters "JIG" stamped in the metal. In 1959 Warden Dougherty disintegrated the inmate population.
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| Leather purses made by inmates! |
The Facility continued to be overcrowded despite numerous additions. Cell Block B in (1950), the Cafeteria and kitchen (1916 &; 1950) the Death House that had the gallows and later the gas chamber and cells for prisoners who were waiting on death row. (1916) and Cell Block C (1966), overcrowding persisted. The facility closed in 1981. Over13,500 inmates were housed here over the 80 years of operation.
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| This is a 4 person cell |
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| Sharon is a bad girl! |
Over the years the cafeteria feeding the inmates was done in different ways. When they settled in on having the inmates form a line and go through the food line and then seat themselves., seemed to work better.The cafeteria was a very drab room with metal tables and benches. There are still the beautiful pictures on the walls that are pretty good sized and colorful. They were painted by an inmate who had only one arm. He did such a beautiful job painting and his style of painting is where you are looking at a picture and the eyes in the picture follow as you move through the room. There were a Lot of these pictures still hanging.
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| Hand made weapons found in cells |
Our Guide was a high school student and her father is a corrections officer. She did a fantastic job with the history of the prison. It is very large and the tour takes an hour. I asked her if she ever wandered around the prison alone and she said that when she has to open the prison in the morning, she is alone and at night she sometimes has to be the closing person. We were the last tour of the day and we noticed she relocked all the doors as we finished viewing that area. It seems very creepy, I would be scared to death to be alone in there. I think if our prisons weren't so comfortable we wouldn't have so many repeat inmates. The stories she told us about the shortage of food and the cold winters with little heat, it made you feel maybe we would take away some of these privileges they might think about not coming back so soon.
