Yuma Territorial Prison

Text by Leo W. Banks Yuma's Territorial Prison

It has been called a brutal pit, a hellhole, a superAlcatraz. One writer even compared it to a famous fictional hades, cautioning entering criminals to remember the inscription in Dante's Inferno: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

The Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma operated for 33 years, from 1876 to 1909, but in that short time it lighted a bonfire in the imagination of pulp writers and sensation mongers that still burns today. No parcel of real estate in Arizona has inspired so much literary excess, so many legends.

Could it be true, as one magazine said, that prisoners were forced to bust rocks in the blast-furnace heat, "with the blow of a club across the kidneys the inevitable result of a moment's pause to gasp for breath?" Or that the screams of prisoners "coming from up on the hill at night would make your blood run cold?"

Such lore is endless. But if the truth be known, the Old Pen was not the savage nightmare of popular literature. Indeed, some commentators of the day thought it offered a far too easy life for hardened felons.

Paul Hull, editor of Arizona Graphic, published in 1899 and 1900, described idle convicts lolling among flowers and oleander trees in the prison yard, smoking cigarettes, and laughing away happy moments with their mates. He concluded: "It is a refined spirit and a dainty stomach that would receive any genuine punishment by confinement there, and most of Yuma's prisoners are materially better off than they are outside the walls."

Hull's assessment, while undoubtedly exaggerated, contains a kernel of truth. Life in Arizona Territory was difficult, sometimes brutally short, and so rife with lawlessness that another editor pleaded with criminals "to permit a few of our citizens to live until they die of natural causes as to show the world what a magnificent, healthy country this is. Against such a violent backdrop, the territorial prison takes on a softer hue, as it does in comparison with other penal institutions of the age. The Journal of Arizona History concluded that the prison "contrasted favorably with many penitentiaries of the day," boasting an administration that was "highly enlightened" in treatment of prisoners.

Evidence of this view included one of the first libraries in the Territory, and, beginning in 1883, a loosely organized prison school, offering classes in languages, arithmetic, music, grammar, writing, and spelling.

In October of 1886, The Arizona Sentinel published a convict's letter supporting this benign view: "This place should not be called a prison; we are all kindly treated, well-fed, and taught useful trades. It should bear the name of an industrial school, as all who are so inclined have ample opportunity to improve the mind."

So the question arises: what was the Old Pen really like?

Enlightened or not, daily life was harsh. The same publication that praised the prison's humanitarian bent also said that physical conditions there were "probably the most primitive of any penitentiary in the U.S."

Most of the cells were simply holes carved into a rocky hillside, with no windows or doors to guard against the heat and cold. In 1890, a prison physician reported that the roof of the main cell building leaked so badly that water poured in during storms.

Discomfort grew with overcrowding. At times, six prisoners shared cells designed for four. This and summer temperatures of more than 120° F. worsened already severe ventilation problems.

The stifling atmosphere was made downright foul by what the prison physician said was the lack of a "system to prevent the return of sewer gas through all the openings into the sewer."

Necessities such as clean water couldn't be taken for granted. A 1904 superintendent's report noted the completion of an auxiliary water tank, adding that prior to that "the water was always in a muddy condition, and almost unfit for drinking or cooking purposes, as well as causing unnecessary wear and tear on the engine and boilers of the lighting plant."

Though a Searingly Hot, Disease-infested Death House, the Frontier Lockup Was in Some Respects Ahead of Its Time

(ABOVE) It was not unusual for men and women convicted of adultery to be sent to Yuma Territorial Prison. C.J. Jackson served three years for this crime. (BELOW) Elena Estrada was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter. She killed her lover and, legend says, tore out bis heart and slapped him with it. During her imprisonment, Estrada spent five days in the Dark Cell for fighting.

(ABOVE) Prisoners lined up for their daily work detail. They worked in the prison kitchen, on the prison farm, and made clothing and footwear.

The photograph on page 12 and the photograph on page 15 showing the prison walls are from the Arizona Historical Society-Yuma. Others are courtesy of the Arizona State Parks Department.

(ABOVE) Acquitted on charges of stagecoach robbery, Pearl Hart was sentenced to five years for possession of a stolen pistol. She was later pardoned and was said to have quit Arizona for the Midwest, where she became an actress. (BELOW) Convicted of selling liquor to an Indian, Feliciano Gomez was fined $200 and sentenced to two years.

Tuberculosis sufferers was a com-mon sound at the prison, where the disease readily spread. Of the approximately 3,000 inmates housed there, 45 died of consumption, as it was called then. Those afflicted with the disease were housed in a special section of the infirmary, and when a new yard was built in 1900, some slept there in cells or in a bunkhouse or beneath covered walkways. As if those conditions were not bad enough, some TB patients were transferred to Yuma from federal prisons, and still others arrived already infected through contact with ordinary citizens. But the Old Pen's primitive aspects usually are counterbalanced by surprising progressiveness. The prison got electricity in April of 1885, making it one of the first institutions west of the Mississippi to boast such a modern convenience. Even the city of Yuma didn't have electricity at that time. As for the convicts' daily lives, they were governed by strict rules, including a policy that they "always touch their caps or foreheads before speaking" to guards. Prisoners also had to shave and bathe at least once a week, "or more if deemed necessary." Contrary to popular belief, guards were forbidden to discipline prisoners. They were under orders to report violators of the rules to the superintendent. Still, the administration occasionally was corrupt. A July, 1893, report of the Board of Territorial Prison Commissioners revealed that "guards [during the administration of Superintendent M.M. McInernay] have been allowed to go on duty while intoxicated, and it was a notorious fact that whiskey was to be had at different stations at the guard stand and offices." McInernay was himself found stealing beef from the commissary and, it seems, whatever else he could carry, including rugs, blankets, table cutlery, and furniture, "without paying anything for it." But the availability of prison records has not, for whatever

Yuma's Territorial Prison

reason, deterred the spread of wild legends. Some originated in Hollywood. The Badlanders, a 1958 movie starring Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine, included a scene in which Borgnine's character was dragged from his cell at Yuma, tied to a whipping post, and lashed. For producers seeking a wide audience, it made a fine action sequence. Never mind that Yuma never had a whipping post. Another Hollywood creation was the Insane Cell, mentioned in numerous periodicals. But historians believe it never existed. What some have called the Insane Cell was actually a hole dug in a hill by a movie company filming a scene. Early photos of the same hill show no such cell. As late as 1966, The Phoenix Gazette printed a photograph of a 200-pound concrete and iron device resembling a huge padlock, identifying it as equipment to test rope for hangings at the prison. But the prison didn't have a scaffold, and no convict ever "swung into eternity" within its walls. (Martin Ubillos, alias Francisco Garcia, was taken from his cell at the prison and hanged by the Sheriff of Yuma County at the courthouse.) As for discipline, the Journal of Arizona History reports that "the only punishment permitted at Yuma was confinement in the Dark Cell on rations of bread and water." The Dark Cell was a high-domed chasm, measuring 15-feet square, that was blasted into the prison's south hill and separated from the remainder of the prison by a six-foot barrier with iron doors at both ends. A few malcontents, usually violent escapees, were given as much as 60 days in the Dark Cell. But more commonly, a prisoner might get four days for refusing to work, seven days for "becoming intoxicated on bay rum procured for tonsorial purposes," or three days for talking in the cellblock after taps. In some ways, the Dark Cell was as horrid as pulp writers imagined. It was blazing hot or freezing cold, and some prisoners did time there attached to a ball and chain. But legends about the Dark Cell are more plentiful than fact. It was not used for solitary confinement (maximum security cells were used for this), and rarely was there only one prisoner doing penance there at a time. This made it more tolerable than some Eastern prisons, where men were handcuffed to the door of the cell, standing, for 18 hours a day. It was through the Dark Cell's lone ventilator shaft that sadistic guards were said to drop snakes on prisoners, hence its nickname, "the Snake Pit." One tale involves scorpions falling like snow to the floor from a nest in the shaft, while a group of women toured the place. The women then regaled townsfolk with descriptions of the awful scene, and soon the scorpions became rattlers, their size growing with each telling.

Yuma's Territorial Prison

This might account for the durability of the legend, but no researcher has been able to confirm that the practice of dropping snakes on prisoners ever took place.

The only recorded death of an inmate from a snake bite occurred outside the prison. On March 18, 1899, The Arizona Sentinel reported: "Go-to-pi-ni, an Apache Indian serving a 25-year sentence in the penitentiary, died in the A.M. the result of coming in contact with a rattlesnake yesterday. He was working in the prison farm, making a garden, when an immense rattler drained its fangs into his forearm."

Yuma's prisoners were routinely said to be "the most vicious in the Territory," and some of their stories were told so many times that they entered the realm of myth. This was particularly true of women prisoners, who seemed to bring out the ghoulish in some writers.

Take "the Latin spitfire," Elena Estrada, whose crime was murdering her lover, then, the embellished story says, cutting his heart out and slapping him in the face with it. As if that didn't sufficiently convey the evil in her soul, one writer said Estrada had "cat's eyes."

Such descriptions went hand in hand with the myth that no one ever escaped from Yuma. But two men did escape from inside the prison, 24 more from outside, usually while they were on work details, and others got away while en route either to or from the prison. All told, records confirm 42 escapes and 96 escape attempts. Some escapes were aborted before the prisoners could leave the grounds. In 1884, a convict convinced friends to bury him on the side of a hill. But guards spotted the ploy.

The Arizona Sentinel reported the results: "The Superintendent officiated at the disinterment, finding the man almost suffocated from the weight of the dirt. The would-be escapee now occupies the snake den, and his accomplices carry a ball and chain. The way of the transgressor is hard."

That was certainly true. Eight prisoners were killed, usually by a guard's rifle, while attempting getaways.

Through its history, incidents of sporadic and terrible violence occurred at the prison, but they were no more frequent than at other such facilities. Certainly Yuma didn't justify this statement about the Old Pen's cemetery, located on a nearby hill, from a 1959 issue of Frontier Times magazine: "Here in this almost forgotten cemetery sleep victims of the gallows, Snake Pit, Insane Cell, and TB Ward and of the weapons of punishment wielded by their keepmen whose own lives depended on their toughness."

ers In 1907, the Legislature voted to close the prison, due primarily to lack of space. The land on which it sat was owned by Yuma, and the city refused to approve further expansion.

Many of the articles about the Old Pen refer to a poem an anonymous prisoner supposedly scratched into the wall of his cell. Historians believe it never existed, putting it on the long list of fictions the prison has inspired. Real or not, the poem provides an interesting footnote: Have you had a kindness shown?

Pass it on

T'was not given for you alone

Pass it on Let it travel down the years Let it wipe another's tears Till in heaven the deed appears

Pass it on

Perhaps to that should be added another line: Let it be known every day That it wasn't so awful in here as they say Pass it on.

WHEN YOU GO

The Yuma Territorial Prison State Park is located near the Giff Parkway exit off Interstate 8. It is open daily, year-round, except Christmas day, from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Admission is $3 for persons 18 and over, $2 for 12 to 17, and free for 11 and under.

For visitors with mobility impairments, the state park has a fully accessible visitor center, museum, and picnic area. Also accessible are rest rooms, exhibits, and telephone. The old prison has corridors from which cells can be viewed. A nearby sight is The Quartermaster Depot, one mile west of the prison. It is fully accessible. For more information about the park and depot, contact Yuma Territorial Prison State Park, Box 10792, Yuma, AZ 85364, (602) 783-4771 or 343-2500; or Arizona State Parks, 800 W. Washington St., No. 415, Phoenix, AZ 85007, (602) 542-4174.