The Yuma Territorial Prison State Park

The Yuma Territorial Prison State Park is right on the border of California, where the Gila and Colorado Rivers meet. There's only one third of the whole prison left, as they moved the railroad and destroyed one-third of the prison to build the tracks. In the forties there was a big flood and the only thing left standing in town was the prison since it was up on a hill, so the people came and tore out walls to get to the wood and adobe brick to rebuild their own homes.

But there was one main row of cell blocks and a row where the "dark hole" (solitary) and library was that the prisoners had dug by hand in the granite of the hillside, so those remained. The parks system, with the help of CCC workers, rebuilt over the old mess hall/kitchen area to create the current museum facility. There were some displays of guns and equipment used and trash they found like bottles from the barber and doctor, but a lot of the museum was pictures of the prisoners and their brief biographies. There were even 29 women that passed through the gates there. It would have been tough there, as the cells were long and narrow, built back-to-back and open at each end with just the iron cell bars as security and protection. So if it rained, the rain could soak them, and if the odd snow would come then there was no protection from the weather, and of course, there was the godawful heat in the summer.

The punishment room was the dark hole, dug about twenty feet back into the granite hillside, opening to an area about 15x20 feet. The prison installed an iron cage that was 10x15 by 5 feet tall, and they would put up to 15 prisoners in there. They were given one meal of bread and water a day, and there were no pots or chamber pots there, they just had to go in a corner of the cage and they wouldn't clean it for 2-3 months at a time. Man! You should think people would go out of their way to be good in prison to avoid that! The narrated videotape there also said that prisoner were not allowed to talk once they were put in their cells for the night, so they would write messages to each other and tie them to "sewer roaches" and throw the bugs outside the bars, where they would immediately run to the next cell, trying to find a dark space again. Ugh! Had to be pretty darn big bugs! There were pictures of boys as young as 14 who were sent to the prison and a man who was sent there at 81. One of the funny bits of history was that the prison was used as a high school in the late 40s or so and the athletic teams were the Yuma Criminals. Try getting away with that nowadays.

We enjoyed our day trip visit and ended the afternoon by driving west into California for a date shake. Make that a date milkshake. No telling what weird thoughts were going through your heads on that one.