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    Alcatraz: 10,000 Years Of Life On The Rock
    Alcatraz: 10,000 Years Of Life On The Rock
    Alcatraz: 10,000 Years Of Life On The Rock
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Alcatraz: 10,000 Years Of Life On The Rock

    By Nicky Leach

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    About this ebook

    Known as one of the most infamous penitentiaries in American history, Alcatraz Island has a history filled with intrigue, heartbreak, and surprising beauty. Nearly 10,000 years of human history are revealed in Nicky Leach's brilliant re-telling of the true history of Alcatraz Island. From early American Indian use, to Civil War garrison, to military prison, and finally to federal penitentiary.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPark Partners, Inc
    Release dateApr 26, 2011
    ISBN9781580711043
    Alcatraz: 10,000 Years Of Life On The Rock
    Author

    Nicky Leach

    Award-winning author Nicky Leach began visiting Utah's national parks 30 years ago and is constantly pulled back by the region's remarkable blend of natural beauty and human history. Born in England and trained as a teacher, Nicky uses her writing to both educate and inspire people to feel more aligned with nature's healing rhythms in their daily lives. She has written 45 guidebooks, including many other Sierra Press titles about parks in the Southwest and the Northwest. Her interpretive writing has been recognized with several National Park Service Cooperating association Awards for Interpretive Excellence. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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      Book preview

      Alcatraz - Nicky Leach

      ALCATRAZ

      10,000 Years Of Life On The Rock

      By

      Nicky Leach

      *****

      SIERRA PRESS

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2011 Sierra Press

      *****

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      *****

      DEDICATION

      To all whose lives have been touched by Alcatraz.

      May your stories always be remembered

      And your spirits set free.

       N.L.

      *****

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      For any author, researching the history of one of America’s most famous icons is a daunting project. So much has been written. I was helped enormously by the enthusiastic support of the combined staff and volunteers of Golden Gate National Recreation Area Alcatraz Island and Golden Gate National Parks Association whose teamwork, creative vision, and passion for interpretation are truly inspiring. Thanks to Craig Glassner, Lori Brosnan, John Cantwell, Christian Hellwig, Sam Vasquez, Benny Batom, Rich Weiderman, Howard Levitt, Clover Earl, Nicki Phelps, and Susan Tasaki. Finally, special thanks to two fellow writers for creative inspiration: historian and ex-NPS ranger John Martini, for putting the word story back into history and brilliantly recreating life on Alcatraz—I enjoyed our free-form conversation; and Tara Ison whose moving and well-researched novel Child Out of Alcatraz suggests that fictionalized true-life stories can help us feel the truth instead of merely recording it.

       N.L.

      *****

      CONTENTS

      Welcome To Alcatraz

      Alcatraz Island

      Dancing On The Brink Of The World

      Fortress Alcatraz

      A Close Call

      Military Prison (1870–1933)

      Federal Penitentiary (1934–1963)

      Warden Johnson

      Alcatraz During World War II

      Life On The Rock

      Famous Prisoners

      Hollywood Comes To Alcatraz

      Famous Escapes

      We Hold The Rock

      Poster Child Of A New Era

      Alcatraz Today

      Gardens Of Alcatraz

      Birds, Animals, and Sea Life

      Golden Gate N.R.A.

      Resources And Information

      Suggested Reading

      About The Author

      *****

      Alcatraz at sunrise

      WELCOME TO ALCATRAZ

      On March 21, 1963, U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz closed its doors for the last time. For 29 years, the three-story concrete cellhouse atop the windswept 22-acre island in San Francisco Bay had housed inmates who had worn out their welcome in other penitentiaries—from incorrigible gangsters like Al Capone to petty thieves, murderers, kidnappers, and political prisoners. There would be no last-minute reprieve. Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s decision to retire the aging facility was final.

      Like its predecessor, the U.S. Army, which had operated a fortress then a military prison on the island from 1853 to 1933, the Bureau of Prisons could not afford the millions of dollars necessary to repair the crumbling prison. It had always been expensive to run and had generated controversy from the beginning. Now, with the pendulum swing of public opinion favoring rehabilitation, not retribution, Alcatraz had gone from being a necessary big stick prison during the violent Depression years to a symbol of a dated penal system criticized for dishing out cruel and inhuman punishment to caged men.

      As helicopters hovered, invited members of the press were ferried from the mainland early in the morning to witness the departure of the remaining prisoners to other penitentiaries. After a tour of the prison, the reporters were ushered into the large dining room, where just hours before, the inmates had enjoyed a final breakfast of Assorted Dry Cereals, Steamed Whole Wheat, Scrambled Egg, Fresh milk, Stewed Fruit, Toast, Bread, Butter, and Coffee. Now, as the institution wound down, the visitors were offered coffee and donuts and use of telephones in the sealed Control Room to file their stories.

      The dog-and-pony show reached its climax later that morning, when 27 convicts, neatly dressed in crisp new denim shirts and pants and pea coats, were escorted silently down Broadway, the 300-foot-long corridor between Blocks B and C, to the area outside the dining room known as Times Square. It was like something from medieval times, wrote one reporter. These men shuffling down the corridor in leg irons. The sound was what I remember the most, a silence, but a strange sound from the shackles. Strange feeling.

      What a long, strange journey it had been, indeed. A total of 1,545 federal inmates served sentences on what was dubbed Uncle Sam’s Devil’s Island. But the oppressive atmosphere, the sheer weight of human misery, and palpable sense of hopelessness and isolation from civilization went back much farther than the Penitentiary years to the military era, when soldiers, traitors, conscientious objectors, even Native Americans, occupied the island that came to be called the Rock.

      The most popular unit in San Francisco’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area, popularly known as Golden Gate Parks, Alcatraz has more than human stories to tell. It is an island ecosystem undergoing constant change as nature works to take down what people have put up. The island’s principal resource is

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