Yuma territorial prison

Yuma prison's main guard tower

I went to the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historical Park this morning and my timing was just about perfect. It was a cloudy morning which made it great for taking pictures, and I got there at 10 o'clock so there was hardly anybody there, but by the time I left an hour and half later it was starting to get busy.

The old Yuma prison is really a neat thing to see especially to be able to get a perspective on how prisoners were treated then and now. I can't count the number of cowboy movies where the Yuma prison was either featured or at least mentioned. It was a big deal in its day.

Unlike today where prisoners get to sit around all day and work out in the gym, the first six prisoners that arrived at the Yuma prison in 1876 had to build their own cells, and work at the prison continued like that until it closed in 1909. They grew their own food, they made adobe bricks to build the prison, and they dug caverns in the rock for some of the prison cells. In other words they earned their keep and paid their debt to society by building and maintaining a state prison. And I personally have no problem with that.

Since I'm leaving tomorrow heading in the direction of Ajo I did some laundry here at the Escapees Park. They have a real nice laundry room it was clean, machines are almost new and it was only $1.25 to wash and $.50 for 40 minutes of drying that's just about as cheap as I've ever seen it.

I doubt if I will make it all the way to Ajo tomorrow because it's 160 miles, and I'm in no hurry to get there, or anyplace else for that matter, so I'll probably stop somewhere along the way.

                                theboondork

Cellblock

The door for a two-man cell

The interior of a two-man cell. It was very small. Summertime it's 120 degrees in the shade in Yuma and there was no air-conditioning. See how the cell is made out of rock, one of the things prisoners did all day was break big rocks into small rocks to build the prison buildings. Imagine swinging a 12 pound hammer all day long every day in 120 degree summer temperatures, it might've made a lot of prisoners rethink the life choices they had made up to that point.

Female prisoners cell carved into the rock.