Old Montana Prison in Deer Lodge, MT

Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - continued

After leaving the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, we headed to the Old Montana Prison on the south end of Main Street. 

As we drove through town, we saw this mural.  Cute!

Then on another corner was this mural on the old Deer Lodge Hotel.

The red brick building is the old prison.  The prison is surrounded by a sandstone wall that is 3 ft wide at the top and 4.5 ft wide at the bottom.  The prison was sited in Deer Lodge in 1871 when Montana was still a Territory, and built out, by inmate labor to the 8 acres complex open today.  The last inmates were moved out in 1997 after operating for 108 years.

This is the amount of space between the outer fence and the prison itself.

This closeup of one of the 6 outer wall towers shows the architecture of the towers.  You can see the width of the top of the wall.

This was on the sidewalk between the prison and the outer wall.  We read that if any inmate crossed this mark without authorization or accompanied by a guard was subject to being shot.

The cells ran 4 stories high.  Early on the women were housed on the top floor.  Later a women's prison was built.

This is a utility passage way used to service the water AND to spy on the inmates.

On the back wall is a mirror and a grid over an opening.  That opening is where the guards would spy on the inmates.

Some cells even housed 2 men.

Here is a guard position in one upper corner.  See the walkways leading to the corner guard position.

Shower anyone?  Hope you aren't modest.  If you were, you would have to get over it.

We tried to get a picture of "The Hole".  However, without or with a flash, the picture was not representative of the space.

In the Women's building were also 2 cells that were for difficult inmates (severe solitaire).  There was no light, no bed, no water, only a bucket for waste.  After 10 days, the inmates were given a physical and possibly put back into severe solitaire.  Hard to think about treating people like that. 

There were tunnels that ran many places from the towers then throughout the prison.  Interesting.

We read that some of the prisoners carved their name and number into the bricks in the outside yards.  The brick in the center was original.  Obviously the top left brick is not an original since the last inmate left in 1997.