Day 6- Alcatraz- A.K.A. -The Rock

We ended our day at the
 Golden Gate Bridge.
It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the
American Society of Civil Engineers.
(Wikepedia)

 But first, I will share our tour of
The Rock.
This was one of my favorite tours of our trip,

Alcatraz!

It was infamous when I was growing up, and actually housed prisoners

from 1934 to March 21, 1963.

 We traveled  1- 1/2 miles across the bay on a ferry headed to
the 12-acre rocky island.

Beautiful views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

 Alcatraz was first explored by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775,
who called it Isla de los Alcatraces (Pelicans) because of all the birds that lived there.
 It was sold in 1849 to the U.S. government.
The first lighthouse in California was on Alcatraz.
 It became a Civil War fort and then a military prison in 1907.

(http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/alcatraz-closes-its-doors)

  In March 1964, a group of Sioux claimed that the island belonged to them due to a 100-year-old treaty. Their claims were ignored until November 1969 when a group of eighty-nine Native Americans representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island. They stayed there until 1971 when AIM was finally forced off the island by federal authorities.

(http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/alcatraz-closes-its-doors)

In 1972, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
 It is now open for tourism.
We were greeted by a National Park Ranger and Bill Baker.


Bill Baker was a former inmate.
He authored a book about life from a prisoners view,
Alcatraz
# 1259
He served time at Alcatraz at the age of 23 in 1957 until 1960.
While there, he learned how to manufacture and cash counterfeit payroll checks,
a "trade" that repeatedly landed him behind bars for the next 50+ years.

 Entering Alcatraz.

At it’s peak period of use in 1950s, “The Rock, or “”America’s Devil Island” housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility.
Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable.

(http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/alcatraz-closes-its-doors)

 I hope I can escape and get back to San Francisco.

The number of inmates processed was 1576.

These are the showers used when you are processed upon arrival.
 An interesting sidelight: Alcatraz was the only federal prison at the time that provided hot-water showers for its inmates, but the motivation was hardly humanitarian. Prisoners used to hot-water showers, the reasoning went, would find the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay almost impossible to withstand during an escape attempt.

(https://www.wired.com/2012/03/march-21-1963-the-rock/)

 This was really a great tour.
We had headsets,
 and as we walked through the prison, the narrator explained what we were viewing
or where we were in the prison.

Institution Rules & Regulations

 At Alcatraz, a prisoner had four rights: food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Everything else was a privilege that had to be earned. Some privileges a prisoner could earn included working, corresponding with and having visits from family members, access to the prison library, and recreational activities such as painting and music.

(http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/famous.htm)

 Recreation Yard

While several well-known criminals, such as
 Al Capone, George "Machine-Gun" Kelly, Alvin Karpis (the first "Public Enemy #1"),
and Arthur "Doc" Barker did time on Alcatraz, most of the 1,576 prisoners incarcerated there were not well-known gangsters, but prisoners who refused to conform to the rules and regulations at other Federal institutions, who were considered violent and dangerous, or who were considered escape risks. Alcatraz served as the prison system's prison - if a man did not behave at another institution, he could be sent to Alcatraz, where the highly structured, monotonous daily routine was designed to teach an inmate to follow rules and regulations.

(http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/famous.htm)

 Isolation in "The Hole."

I hope they don't keep you long, Doug.

Once prison officials felt a man no longer posed a threat and could follow the rules
 (usually after an average of 5 years on Alcatraz),
 he could then be transferred back to another Federal prison to finish his sentence and be released.

(http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/famous.htm)

 Over the years, there were 14 known attempts to escape from Alcatraz, involving 36 inmates. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that of these would-be escapees, 23 were captured, six were shot and killed during their attempted getaways, two drowned and five went missing and were presumed drowned.

 The most famous escape attempt resulted in a battle, from May 2 to May 4, 1946,
 in which six prisoners overpowered cellhouse officers and were able to gain access to weapons, but not the keys needed to leave the prison. In the ensuing battle, the prisoners killed two correctional officers and injured 18 others. The U.S. Marines were called in, and the battle ended with the deaths of three of the rogue inmates and the trial of the three others, two of whom received the death penalty for their actions.

(http://www.history.com/topics/alcatraz)

 During the May, 1946, escape attempt,
Officer William a. Miller was one of several correctional officers
held hostage in his cell.  He was mortally wounded when he hid the keys the
inmates needed to complete their escape.

Alcatraz was able to house 450 convicts in cells that measured about 10 feet by 4.5 feet.

More on Alcatraz

Prisoners could look across the bay and see freedom,
but the cold waters of the bay made escape impossible.


 Frank Morris and brothers John And Clarence Anglin
made the most creative escape attempt in the history of Alcatraz.

 They placed dummy heads made of soap, cement, and paint under their blankets in the
middle of the night, and crawled out of their cells through the small vents,
scaled the utility corridor to the roof, slid down the stovepipe,
and crept to the shoreline.


 The three men reached the bay.
As they slipped into the water- using a raft fashioned out of
a raincoat- they met the icy current rapidly ebbing out to sea.
They were never seen again.

Inmates were served three meals a day.
The food was the best in the federal prison system and there was
plenty of it.

 Tableware was issued on a need-only basis.
All the tools were kept in locked cabinets and carefully guarded.

 The dining area was considered the most dangerous part of the prison.
Nearly the entire prison populations was assembled into one place.
This meant a congregation of more than 258 inmates at a time.

 The prison closed on March 21, 1963.
AZ 1576 Frank Weatherman was the last prisoner to leave Alcatraz.
The federal penitentiary at Alcatraz was shut down because its operating expenses were much higher than those of other federal facilities at the time. (The prison’s island location meant all food and supplies had to be shipped in, at great expense.) Furthermore, the isolated island buildings were beginning to crumble due to exposure to the salty sea air. During nearly three decades of operation, Alcatraz housed a total of 1,576 men.

(http://www.history.com/topics/alcatraz)

 Here Doug and I are with former inmate,
William Baker.
We have an autographed copy of his book about life from the inside.

 We made it off the island and headed back to San Francisco.

We took a city tour in the afternoon.

Photos of the painted sisters Victorian homes.

We had an opportunity for some great photos of the
Golden Gate Bridge.
It is an engineering marvel.

Where San Francisco meets the Pacific Ocean.

In the 1880s, Adolph Sutro, who made millions in silver mining and real estate, bought acreage here, dubbed it Sutro Heights, and set about transforming the land into an elaborate public garden, with forests, flower beds, and wide paths leading to vista points. He also snapped up and grandly refurbished the region’s signature oceanfront restaurant, Cliff House, and started building his dream project: an open-to-all waterfront wonderland, including a massive glass structure enclosing six swimming pools, each naturally recharged with seawater at high tide and heated to various temperatures. Over the decades, the Sutro family struggled to keep it all financed and functioning, but after a fire in 1966, the baths were permanently shuttered. Development plans for the site fell through, and, in 1976, the bathhouse complex, now no more than dramatic ruins, and surrounding acreage were designated as parkland, a federally protected part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

(http://www.visitcalifornia.com/attraction/lands-end-san-franciscos-oceanfront-gem)

Below you can see ruins of the Sutro Baths.

The Sutro Baths could accommodate 10,000 people at one time,
 with 500 dressing rooms, and 20,000 bathing suits and 40,000 towels for rent.

(http://www.visitcalifornia.com/attraction/lands-end-san-franciscos-oceanfront-gem)

Our day ended at Land's End.