Alcatraz, a Brief History
August 11th, 1934, one of the most famous prisons in American history received its first batch of U.S civilian prisoners and began its first day of its 29-year tenure as a Federal Prison to house the most dangerous criminals the country had. This prison was Alcatraz, and while it had been used on and off as a prison for military prisoners since 1868, be it Indian Scouts, American deserters or Chinese Civilians at one point during the Boxer Rebellion, this would be the first day of its post-retrofitting into a penitentiary rather a military prison compound.
Needless to say, Alcatraz has had a startlingly famous reputation as one of the top security prisons at the time of its federal tenure. With it having housed individuals such as the murderer Robert Stroud “the Birdman of Alcatraz”, George “Machine Gun” Kelly who was a key member of organized crime, and the most famous of the lot, Al Capone, the man that defined the Prohibition Era as an era of criminal rule and corruption. But while its notoriety did come from housing many high profile criminals, the island was most famous for the fact that no one successfully escaped the and lived to tell the tale, mostly because those that did escape the initial building ran into the issue of Alcatraz being surrounded by treacherous waves that made swimming quite difficult. Alongside boats being only used or guarded heavily, swimming was the only real option to get off “The Rock”. Out of 14 different escape attempts, it is assumed that seven drowned while the rest where either caught or were shot during their escape attempts; and of 5 of those 7 escapees, the bodies have yet to be found.
By 1963 Alcatraz was closed due to the horrendously expensive cost required to run the facility compared to most other prisons. Turns out being on an island resulted in several logistical issues that quickly get expensive and the U.S government no longer wished to keep paying those costs. Afterwards the facility and island where essentially abandoned and left to rot, with any prisoners still stationed there having long been moved to different prisons before it was closed. This led to a group of Native Americans during 1969 to claim the island as Indian land with a slim hope to make a new Native American Cultural Center. However, due to many people arriving to “support” the natives that, in truth, just wanted a reason to deface federal property, and the situation getting more rowdy as time went on, the Federal Marshals were called to remove the protesters and the Native Americans from the island in 1971.
A year later the US government decided that they should really do something about Alcatraz in case another situation like this happened, but the cost of maintaining it in any capacity was still difficult to justify. So, deciding to kill two birds with one stone, Alcatraz got turned into basically a tourist attraction and was given to the National park Services to handle; effectively turning the island into a museum. From 1973 and to the present day the island has served as one of the most popular sites the Park Services have under their belt, with their near million yearly visitors more than able to help flip the cost of maintaining the island in every aspect.
Now for a question most will more likely be wanting to know, has anyone wanted to reopen Alcatraz as a federal prison? Well, there have only been two times in which Alcatraz has been requested to be reopened outside of its current state and turned into a facility to hold people. The first of was by President Ronald Reagan who wanted to use it to house around 20,000 Cuban refugees, effectively turning the island into a refugee camp; This idea failed due to the costs required to turn a prison that could hold at most 336 prisoners into a facility that could temporarily hold nearly 60 times that amount of people. The second person who wished to reopen Alcatraz as a prison is President Donald Trump, who unlike Reagan wants to turn it back into a Federal Prison. Whether or not this goes through or fails is an entirely different matter as, once again, the logistical cost of running Alcatraz was not something the Federal Government wished to do at the time of its closing, and will more than likely fail again due to such budget concerns.
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