(This piece is based on research published by Darrell McBreairty in Alcatraz Eel: the John Stadig Files)
It was during the time of the California gold rush that the United States
first got the idea to build a fortress on Alcatraz Island. The reason was to
protect its newfound wealth from peg-legged pirates or whoever else they were
afraid was going to rob their coffers. One imagines President Zachary Taylor at
the time as some crotchety old bent over prospector rattling his fist at the
Pacific horizon and shouting in a dusty voice, “Our gold! We can’t let ‘em take
our gold!”
It turned out after all that no one came to try to un-stuff the lumpy
mattresses of the United States government. The fortress on Pelican Island sat
uselessly for two decades until the Civil War broke out. At that point the army
decided it would be an ideal place for holding captured rebels, surrounded as
it was by the spine-eating cold and the swim fighting currents of San Francisco
Bay. But it was during the Spanish-American War that they raised it to its
full, dark potential, when four hundred and fifty POWs were crammed inside of
its walls.
By 1934 the United States Army, with no wars to keep it rich, could no
longer afford to maintain the Alcatraz Military Prison. The Department of
Justice however was prospering at the time from the increase of crime caused by
the mass poverty of the great depression, and they took it over. They wired it
for electricity; they flooded every utility tunnel with cement, and fortified
every cell and cellblock with modern steel. With all the money they had to blow
on renovations they decided to get especially fancy with the ceiling of the
cafeteria, where they installed tear gas canisters that could be triggered from
the outside. However, they didn’t take it into consideration the fact that the
guards would never leave the dining area. So if a riot were to occur, the
teargas would also be dropped on them.
Alcatraz was designed physically to be one of the strongest prisons in
existence and administratively to be the harshest and least forgiving of any
other correctional facility. No crime committed on the outside world would get
someone sentenced to Alcatraz. To end up there you had to already be a prisoner
somewhere else, and a bad one. Alcatraz was where you were sent when no other
prison could handle you.
Though there was some access to the prison library at Alcatraz, inmates
were not allowed to read or hear about current events through newspapers or
radios. There were also no movies, no plays, and no entertainment of any other
kind. The intention of such extreme isolation was to make “the Rock” an island
of men who were dead to the world. It was crucial to the administration that
all 212 men understand that whether by serving their time and being released,
or by staying for the rest of their lives, Alcatraz was the last prison they
would ever know.
