Angel Island and Alcatraz

When Ben and I started planning our trip to San Francisco there was no question that our number one item on our to do list was a tour of Alcatraz. However, we procrastinated and when we went to book the tour a few weeks before our trip, all the Alcatraz tours were already booked. Ugh! There was no way we were going to go to San Francisco and not go to Alcatraz! So, we started searching the internet and luckily found a combination tour of Alcatraz and Angel Island. We had not heard much about Angel Island, but since it was our only for sure option left of getting us to Alcatraz, we signed up. We were so glad that we did!

We went to Angel Island first and on our way there our boat went past Alcatraz.

We also got to enjoy a neat view of Sausalito and see some of the house boats along the shoreline.

Once we reached Angel Island, we hopped onto a tram and went on a guided tour of the island. Ben and I had no idea the rich history that Angel Island has been apart of.

 Angel Island, thousands of years ago, was inhabited by a Coast Miwok group. The island had many benefits to this group including close proximity to fresh water and it was an abundant food source. The Miwok were expert fishermen and also hunted deer along with other marine life on the island. There are still deer on the island today, which surprised me. The mule deer was reintroduced by the army in 1915 for hunting. Due to the absence of predators the deer soon over grazed the island and now their population is controlled by the state of California.

The island was also once known as the "wood island" by whalers and sailors who would come to the island to collect wood. They cut down most of the trees off the island. In the 19th century, the military planted 24 acres of Eucalyptus trees on the island for windbreaks, beautification, timber, and erosion control. The eucalyptus trees became invasive and expanded to 86 acres. It was approved to remove all but 6 acres of the Eucalyptus trees from the island in order to restore native flora.

Ben and I went and took a picture in one of the remaining groves of Eucalyptus trees.

Angel Island has a beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

The army also used the island as a fort to protect the cove. Our guide told us that at one time the army was able to shoot cannonballs the size of a car that could travel up to a mile off of Angel Island.

 A U.S. Quarantine station was established in the cove in 1891 to 1946 to isolate people with contagious diseases. It included 40 buildings as well as a commanding officer's quarters, and a hospital. There was a station on Ayala cove, or at the time called hospital cove, where they would fumigate ships to kill insects and rodents and isolate passengers who were suspected of carrying a disease to keep San Francisco protected.

 On the north shore of Angel Island, an immigration station was opened in 1910; modeled after the Ellis Island immigration station in New York Harbor. Asian immigrants were held for lengthy interrogations to prove their identity before they could enter the country. Locked in barracks such as the building below for weeks, months, or even years. Immigrants had to prove they had family who were U.S. citizens in order to not be deported. Our guide informed us that around 25% of people who tried to immigrate to the U.S. through Angel Island immigration were sent home, while Ellis Island only sent home approximately 1-2%. The immigration administration building burned in 1940 and the station was closed and operations were moved to San Francisco. Poems are written among the walls of the immigration barracks of the hardships that the people faced. One young boy who immigrated to the U.S. through Angel Island later became an animator for Walt Disney and helped animate Bambi.

 During WWII, Fort McDowell took over the entire island. With the recently abandoned immigration station the fort became a staging area processing up to 4200 incoming or out coming troops at a time. After the last soldiers came home in 1946 Fort McDowell closed down. Additional buildings were built in 1940 when the island also became a World War II POW camp.

 After a morning of exploring Angel Island we got back onto our boat and went to Alcatraz.

 "Break the rules and you go to prison, 

break the prison rules and you go to Alcatraz."

The federal prison on Alcatraz Island housed some of America’s most difficult and dangerous felons during its years of operation from 1934 to 1963. Alcatraz tends to be most well known for the fact that it was a high-profile, maximum-security facility.

 

 However, the island has been home to much more. During the 1850s, a fortress was constructed on Alcatraz and some 100 cannons were installed around the island to protect San Francisco Bay along with Fort Point and Angel Island. During this time the first West Coast operational lighthouse was built. Alcatraz fortress was decommissioned in 1907.

By the late 1850s, the U.S. Army had begun holding military prisoners at Alcatraz. Isolated from the mainland by the cold, strong waters of San Francisco Bay, the island was deemed an ideal location for a prison. It was assumed no Alcatraz inmate could attempt to escape by swimming and survive the strong currents and frigid water in the bay.

During its years as a military prison, the inmates at Alcatraz included Confederate sympathizers, citizens accused of treason during war, and Alcatraz also housed a number of “rebellious” American Indians. Labor from the military prisoners was used to construct a new cellhouse (the 600-cell structure that still stands today) on Alcatraz, along with a hospital, mess hall and other prison buildings. According to the National Park Service, when this new complex was finished in 1912 it was the world’s largest reinforced concrete building.

The prison was built on top of the fortress. This is the view down into the fortress from Cell Block A.

In 1933, the Army relinquished Alcatraz to the U.S. Justice Department, which wanted a federal prison that could house a criminal population too difficult or dangerous to be handled by other U.S. penitentiaries. Following construction to make the existing complex at Alcatraz more secure, the maximum-security facility officially opened on July 1, 1934.

 

 

Cell Block A was never upgraded to be able to contain federal prisoners. Cell Block A is typically closed to the public. However, for an hour the day we were visiting they opened it up for viewing.

We listened to an audio tour for the remainder of the prison.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons viewed Alcatraz as “the prison system’s prison,” a place where the most disruptive inmates could be sent to live under sparse conditions with few privileges in order to learn how to follow rules. At which point, they could be transferred to other federal prisons to complete their sentences. Never could the courts send a new prisoner directly to Alcatraz and very few inmates were actually released from Alcatraz. They typically were sent elsewhere after learning to "behave" to finish their sentence. Alcatraz typically held some 260 to 275 prisoners, which represented less than 1 percent of the entire federal inmate population.

 Isolation. D Block. Know to inmates as "The Hole" was reserved for unusually dangerous or violent inmates. They were confined to their cells 24 hours a day.

The Alcatraz prison is just a little over a mile away from San Fransisco, the prisoners reported that on foggy days when the city was hidden they felt extremely isolated. However, on less foggy days when they could see the city, smell the chocolate from the Ghirardelli chocolate factory, and often times hear the noises of the city, it reminded them of everything they were missing and was no improvement from the isolation they sometimes felt.

Aside from all the hardships of Alcatraz, there was one benefit to being a prisoner on "The Rock". The Food was some of the best in the federal prison system due to the fact that the guards and inmates ate the same meals. The kitchen was the most dangerous room on Alcatraz. Inmates had access to metal knives, forks and spoons. Guards stood on guard along with tear gas canisters mounted in the ceiling helped keep prisoners in line.

During nearly three decades of operation, Alcatraz housed a total of 1,576 men. Some of it's most notorious inmates included: Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Gangster Alvin Karpowicz, murderer Robert Stroud, also known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz,”

 Even though Alcatraz was believed to be escape-proof and America's strongest prison this did not crush the inmates hopes of a successful escape. Over the years, there were 14 known attempts to escape from Alcatraz, involving 36 inmates. 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 old industrial building

Ben and I were able to catch two tours from national park employees. One man talked about all the different prisoners that had served time on the island. The other tour was all about the attempted escapes. The old industrial building had too many windows and hallways. It was the site of multiple attempted escapes. A new industrial building that was one large room was built in it's place where inmates could go to "work" doing laundry and so forth.

 

 

The most violent escape attempt resulted in a battle from May 2 to May 4, 1946, in which six prisoners overpowered prison guards and were able to gain access to weapons through the elevated gun gallery. One of the inmates had discovered a flaw in the bars protecting the gun gallery and was able to use a nut and bolt to spread the bars enough to squeeze through the space. Once in the gun gallery he was able to overtake the guard and hand weapons to his accomplices. The prisoners were unable to get out through the doors due to a jammed door lock from trying too many incorrect keys and were trapped inside the prison. In the battle, the prisoners killed two correctional officers and injured 18 others. The U.S. Marines were called in, drilled holes through the ceiling and dropped grenades through the roof to corner the inmates. 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.

Ben at the prisoner visitation area.

During the most creative escape attempt from Alcatraz, three men placed dummy heads made of soap, cement, human hair, and paint under their blankets in the middle of the night. The escapees crawled out of their cells through the small vents that they had enlarged with spoons, scaled the utility corridor to the roof, slid down a stove pipe, and crept to the shoreline. The three men reached the bay and slipped into the water using a raft fashioned out of a more than 50 raincoats. They were never seen again. To this day it is still a debate whether they survived. Most have come to the conclusion that they did not make it to shore that night.

The Warden's Quarters

Even with all these attempted escapes the employees of the prison as well as their families lived on the island! Scary! They could catch a ferry back to the city daily to go shopping, or attend events.

After the prison was shut down due to high operating costs, buildings crumbling from salty sea waters, and sanitary issues (there was no sewage system, sewage was released right into the bay), the island was unoccupied for almost two years.

Starting in 1969, a group of Native-American activists claimed the land on behalf of “Indians of All Tribes.” They claimed Alcatraz was theirs “by right of discovery,” but they sarcastically offered to buy it for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth”—the same price that Indians supposedly received for the island of Manhattan. The activists added that they didn’t mind that the island was underdeveloped or lacked fresh water, since most of them had already endured similar conditions on government Indian reservations. The group lived on the island for almost a year and a half before being removed.