Yuma's Territorial Prison

The Territorial Prison at Yuma was founded in the hectic days of Arizona territory. Such were those lawless days that an Arizona editor wrote: "We wish that a few of our citizens could be permitted to live until they die a natural death, so as to show the world what a magnificent, healthy country this is." When the state prison was moved to Florence, the Territorial Prison served for a while as Yuma's high school building, is now a museum. (Norman G. Wallace.) STINGING blasts of February wind lashed at the slight figure of a sobbing girl who stood, face bowed in tear-bathed hands, a forlorn figure in the outer surge of a churning mob. She had just seen her man hanged. The victim of the mob's fury had been wrested from the sheriff, dragged from the nearby Tombstone courthouse and strung up to a telephone pole on lower Toughnut street, all in the course of a few minutes of lightning-like concerted action by the mob. The lawless group was beginning to disperse as Robert Hatch, a deputy sheriff who one day was to become an assistant superintendent of Yuma Prison, walked slowly toward the grieving woman and stood for a moment beside her as she repeatedly moaned, "Johnny, what have they done to you!" Gently the deputy said, "You'd better leave, Miss. This ain't no place for a woman." Then, after an awkward pause, he

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In 1907 the prison at Yuma was moved to Florence, leaving sunbaked walls and empty cellblocks as a reminder of its active career. Dedication of Territorial prison as a museum took place this spring. (From the Hayhurst Collection.) Frantic Arizona citizens, trying to bring law and order to the territory, called for the erection of Yuma prison. The remains of it today house a museum in which will be preserved mementoes of a wilder era.

Hangings were typical of vigilante hangings in other localities throughout the territory dur-ing the decades of the 60's, '70's and '80's, whereat mobs of men under various guises and names usurped or depending on the point of view-supplemented and expedited legal functions which the United States District Court had been laboring to perform since its inception in the region in 1864. While the fleet-footed years raced along, that bewhiskered old gentleman called Con-gress began, in 1867, to take note of the huge law-enforcement problem in the vast and sparsely settled domain of Arizona by authorizing the establishment of a Terri-torial Prison.

Heartened by this federal gesture, Arizona's legislature, on December 7, 1868, passed a concurring measure, which desig-nated that the proposed prison should be built at or near Phoenix. But this infant of the legislative brain died shortly after birth by being left to lie dormant in the sta-tutes, while the "Johnnyrebs" and "Damn-yankees" among the post-Civil War law-makers jousted over whether the capital should remain at Prescott or be moved to Tucson. However, the bloody fist of crime drove the solons to grapple with the prison prob-lem once again; and, on February 12, 1875, the last day of the Eighth Legislative Assembly, meeting in Tucson, they voted to build the penitentiary at Yuma and authorzona's legislature, on December 7, 1868, passed a concurring measure, which desig-nated that the proposed prison should be built at or near Phoenix. But this infant of the legislative brain died shortly after birth by being left to lie dormant in the sta-tutes, while the "Johnnyrebs" and "Damn-yankees" among the post-Civil War law-makers jousted over whether the capital should remain at Prescott or be moved to Tucson. However, the bloody fist of crime drove the solons to grapple with the prison prob-lem once again; and, on February 12, 1875, the last day of the Eighth Legislative Assembly, meeting in Tucson, they voted to build the penitentiary at Yuma and authorized the sale of $25,000 in bonds to start its construction. Gov. A. P. K. Safford signed the act and appointed as the first board of prison commissioners David Neahr, Jose M. Redondo and William H. Hardy, with H. N. Alexander, a Yuma lawyer as secretary. Subsequently, Isaac Polhamus, superintend-ent of the Colorado Steam Navigation Com-pany, became a member of the board of com-missioners in place of Mr. Hardy, who failed to qualify.

This same legislative assembly also provided for the establishment of a public school system in Arizona.

Technically, William Werninger, a sheriff of Yuma County, was regarded as the first warden or superintendent, because persons Life for inmates in Territorial prison was no comfortable matter, although many of the wardens went to great length to conduct as humane administrations as possible. The history of the prison reads as a history of lawlessness in the west. (From the Hayhurst Collection.)

convicted after the passage of the Prison Act and before the penitentiary was built were placed in his custody in the county jail. However, in June, 1876, George M. Thurlow posted a $5,000 bond and assumed his duties as the first actual superintendent of the institution.

Immediately following the appointment of the prison board, the members rolled up their sleeves and went to work on the adoption of a method of procedure and the advertising for a set of architectural plans. From among competitive bidders, the plans submitted by A. L. Grow, described as "An excellent machinist and engineer of Yuma," were accepted and for them he was paid $150.

Although ground for the prison had not been selected on May 22, 1875, on that date the first inmate for the unbuilt bastile arrived, in the person of William H. Hall, handcuffed to Joe Phy, a Pima County deputy sheriff, and lugging a life sentence for murder at Tucson. Hall was lodged in the Yuma County jail, whence he escaped but was captured and "slung in irons," eventually imprisoned, later pardoned, and lived to serve two additional sentences in Yuma penitentiary. Phy was slain one day in a gunfight with Pete Gabriel, at the inland town of Florence.

As this balmy May drew to a close, the commissioners procured a ten-acre tract on which to build on a barren bluff which has been likened to a thirsty tongue thrust out into the waters at the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers. It was announced that work on the structure of stone and iron surrounded by a high adobe wall would start on September 1.

Thirty years before this, the sons of American men began to gaze upon the region around Yuma and call it fair indeed, kissed as it was by the life-giving waters of the Colorado. First, it was a ferry point for the army during the war with Mexico and later for adventuresome argonauts seeking the California shore; next, a small settle-ment bloomed, and while peaceful Indians exchanged guttural grunts of bug-eyed wonderment at the busy palefaces-it grew into a place called Yuma.

Yuma, in the mid-Seventies of the prison's beginning, was destined to burgeon into a garden spot in the heart of an agricultural empire, and at that time had long been established as a shipping point by sea and along the Colorado. The first steamboats began docking there in the 1850's; hence, as Arizona's only seaport, it was the distribution point for supplies to inland communities and a haven for travelers who preferred river and ocean transportation to the hazards of stagecoach journeys across the vast sweep of Apache-infested desert to the eastward. One-way steamer passage between Yuma and San Francisco cost forty dollars in coin.

Topics of talk on the ships, docks, stagecoaches and round about town this torrid summer of the prison's beginning dealt with local earthquake shocks; a $4,000,000 fire which swept Virginia City, Nevada; and another lynching at Phoenix.

On February 5, 1876, nearly one year after the legislature passed the prison act, the board of commissioners complained in the press that "the little $25,000 in greenbacks appropriated by our Territorial Legislature cannot accomplish much more than the foundation." Progress on the structure was point-ed to, but it was estimated that $50,000 additional would be needed to complete the project.

That the needed money was forthcoming was indicated by the laying of the cornerstone of the prison, Tuesday morning, April 28, during a public ceremony at which A. J. Finlay, mayor of Yuma, wielded the trowel. According to the press, a collection of articles was placed under the stone, "To show the people who may inhabit this planet away down in the dim future what kind of people erected this building. Tne collection The collection consisted of a copy of the Arizona Sentinel of April 15, 1876, and some U. S. coin."

During these first months of the prison, the rich McCracken silver mine at Signal was shipping barge loads of ore down the river; the prison commissioners announced that convicts were being fed for 39 cents a day, as proof of economy; and the local editor was wringing his hands over the increasing outlawry on the frontier.Yuma passed an ordinance in the fall which threatened careless pistol shooters with a minimum fine of ten dollars or two days in jail; the SS Montana was destroyed by fire in the Gulf of California; and Col. James M. Barney of Yuma bought a onehalf interest in the fabulously rich Silver King mine, north of Florence, for an announced $300,000 "in coin." Those days seemed to harbor a lack of confidence in "government greenbacks."

On December 4, Capt. John Summerhayes arrived at the port from inland Arizona, to meet the ship bearing his young wife back from a visit to the States she told about it in a book, "Vanished Arizona," which she wrote 32 years later; and the year closed with the local citizenry doffing its sombrero to Warden Thurlow and his two guards for the efficient management of the small but rapidly expanding Yuma Prison.Continued Apache depredations in southeastern Arizona caused Capt. Samuel Marmaduke Whitside to march a company of soldiers from Tucson to the Huachuca mountains, early in 1877, and on Mar. 3 he selected the site of Fort Huachuca. Among the civilians with the soldiers was a prospector named Ed Schieffelin, who was destined to discover the great Tombstone ore body. On September 3, the first Southern Pacific train crossed the Colorado River and entered Yuma from the west; however, two years were to elapse before the railroad again started moving eastward.

Gov. John J. Gosper issued a proclamation in 1879 which offered a reward of $500 to anyone who killed a bandit during the act of robbing and another reward of $300 "for the capture and conviction" of a highway robber; Wells Fargo & Co. promptly matched this latter with $300 reward of its own for bandit capture; and, in August, Phoenix renewed its war on crime by lynching two more killers. Tombstone was spewing forth riches and gunmen there were spraying the landscape with hot lead.While Yuma prison was gradually being enlarged to accommodate its increasing population, Chinese coolies were rapidly unrolling the Southern Pacific ribbons of steel eastward across the desert; the first trains, which were sounding the deathknell of steamboat and stagecoach transportation, reached Tucson in March 1880; and travel to that ancient pueblo, which formerly required five stagecoach days from Yuma, was being accomplished in a few hours.

In this year, Oliver Boyer, the first murderer to be sent to Yuma Prison from Tombstone, arrived in town to spend the remainder of his life but was pardoned within less than three years. The Schieffelin brothers sold their Tombstone mining interests for a million dollars. And an Arizona editor, writing on the perennial crime problem, concluded with: "We wish that a few of our citizens could be permitted to live until they die of a natural death, so as to show the world what a magnificent, healthy country this is."

As 1881 rolled round, Gen. Lew Wallace, governor of the Territory of New Mexico and author of "Ben Hur," was struggling with outlawry on his frontier by trying to pacify Apaches and such white renegades as William (Billy the Kid) Antrim; while the great pathfinder, Gen. John C. Fremont, as governor of Arizona, was planning a militia company for the same purpose. In this year Cochise County was created and John H. Behan was appointed its first sheriff, as a forerunner of his later advancement to the wardenship of Yuma Prison, and fire swept hellroaring Tombstone for the first time on June 22. On July 3, a maniac fatally shot President Garfield; in October, the Earp band launched a carnival of killings; in the same month Fremont resigned his governorship; and, a few months earlier, Tucson hanged Tom Harper, legally, for murder.

Bickering, practical-joking and name-calling between persons through the medium of paid advertisements in the press were commonplace. One day, some prankster inserted a "reader" in the Tombstone Epitaph stating that William Kinsman was soon to marry Miss May Woodman; the next day, in a paid "ad," Kinsman vigorously denied that he had any such intention; the next day, the newspaper announced free of charge that Kinsman had been shot to death in front of the Crystal Palace gambling house by Miss Woodman. The murderess was given a life sentence and thus became Yuma Prison's second woman inmate. She was pardoned three years later.

Another new year got off to a flying start by the legal hanging of five murderers, on a blustery Friday afternoon, March 28, 1884, in Tombstone, for the same multiple crime for which John Heith had been lynched by a mob the month before; Joseph Casey was legally hanged in the Tucson jailyard in April; the Globe Silver Belt was pointing to the 138 inmates of Yuma Prison, and an asserted $1.43 daily per capita cost to maintain them, and demanding that expenses be reduced; miner's wages were cut in Tombstone; the miners went on strike; there was a run on the banks; and the exodus from that place of ephemeral richness began.Capt. F. S. Ingalls, old-time river steamer pilot, who had became superintendent of Yuma prison, reported to his board the completion of 18 new cells and improvements to the massive adobe walls around the grounds, atop which was a menacing gatling gun; and during November, Gov. F. H. Tritle came down from Prescott and inspected the institution.

Grover Cleveland replaced Chester A. Arthur as President, in 1885. Early in the The cellblocks at Yuma prison were constructed to last and to hold "tough hombres" of the old West who were "hard to hold." To build the prison $25,000 was voted by the Territorial legislature, a sum that proved to be hardly enough for the foundation. (By Norman G. Wallace.) Next year the new national leader named C. Meyer Zulick as governor of Arizona, and he appointed new prison commissioners, who in turn chose Thomas Gates of Tucson to replace Mr. Ingalls as superintendent. The position paid $3,000 a year and was an avidly-sought plum.

An extensive report to the prison board was soon rendered by Superintendent Gates, which showed there were 169 prisoners at the beginning of the preceding quarter, and that during the same period 19 had completed their sentences, three had been pardoned by the President, six were pardoned by the Territorial governor, one went insane, and 19 new prisoners were received; there were 17 guards; convicts wore stripes, and were kept busy at various occupations which included light wagon and buggy making, garment making, blacksmithing, and lace making. The report said that discipline was good and that 18 months had elapsed since any attempt to escape had been made. But a few months later, on October 27, 1887, the most serious mutiny in the prison's history took place, when seven convicts captured Superintendent Gates. He was stabbed in the neck and back, but four of his assailants were slain by gunfire. Gates never fully recovered, later resigned his post because of his suffering, and subsequently committed suicide. One life-term killer had jumped to the embattled superintendent's aid and helped shoot down the mutineers, for which the "lifer" was pardoned by Governor Zulick, but later indications were that he had plotted the mutiny with seven Mexican prisoners, with the intention of doublecrossing his co-conspirators and winning for himself the pardon which he subsequently received.

For a while, the Territorial press made quite an editorial' issue of the prison riot, some of the Republican papers blaming the incident on mismanagement and severe discipline and the Democratic editors largely defending Gates' administration and pointing to the vicious nature of frontier criminals as responsible for the fatal riot. While Phoenix was exulting in the early part of 1889 at having wrested the capital from Prescott, the new prison superintendent noted in his routine report to the board that 7 prisoners had died inside Yuma's walls in two years, four of them having been those slain in the attack on Thomas Gates; one was killed in attempting to escape, one died a suicide, one by accident, and one by disease. Also, Behan installed the first sewer system the prison had, although electrical illumination had previously replaced the original kerosene lamps.

During this year, Benjamin Harrison replaced Grover Cleveland as President and Lewis Wolfley supplanted Zulick as Arizona's governor; and, consequently, a Republican board of prison commissioners marched on Yuma and demanded that P. R. Brady, chairman of the Democratic board, make way for the new regime. The new board comprised W. C. Davis, J. L. Robins and E. A. Cutter. But the incumbents raised an issue as to the legality of the new board and refused to vacate; bickering ensued for a time, while both groups "met in regular session." The issue was carried into the courts, and the Wolfley group came out the winners.

In this period, one of Tombstone's notoriousious killers, Buckskin Frank Leslie, was convicted of his fourteenth murder and sentenced to Yuma for life. The insane asylum began to be injected into politics, as well as the prison. Capt. F. S. Ingalls, former superintendent, was again appointed head warden of the prison; and he secured as his assistant Robert S. Hatch, the one-time Tombstone deputy sheriff who, more than six years before, had witnessed the lynching of Dancehouse Johnny Heith. So the mauve decade of the reputedly

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