12/31/2015 Not sure why, but Yuma has a giant fork on Main Street.
1/1/2016 Many cowboy movies and TV shows contained Yuma as the back drop. More times than not, the Yuma Territorial Prison was part of the movie. It sits on the top of a hill overlooking the Colorado River. Today, I visited it.
Guardhouse. This is a reconstruction.
The museum contained a lot of neat information about its inhabitants.
On July 1, 1876, the first seven inmates entered the Territorial Prison at Yuma and were locked into the new cells they had built themselves. Thus began the legend of the Yuma Territorial Prison. A total of 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, lived within the walls during the prison's 33 years of operation.
I found it interesting that the prison was built by the prisoners before they could move in. The prisoners also did reconstruction as needed.
After prison closed, it was pretty much abandoned until a fire burned down the local High School, The prison was used as the high school while the new one was being built. The high school's sports teams then became known as the "Yuma High Criminals".
While most of the prison was torn down, the cell blocks remained.
If a prisoner disobeyed, he or she was placed in the Dark Cell for several days depending upon the infraction. Inside this dark cave like room was a six by six cell. If there was more than one prisoner, they just kept squeezing them into the cell. While most of the occupants of the Dark Cell were male, there was one time when there were two women in there instead of men.
During the prisons operation, 112 men died during their stay. While 8 had been shot trying to escape, most of the deaths were from illness. Only 2 men successfully escaped from the prison.
On 1/4/2016, I leave the Yuma area for Indio, California.
Interesting...Hope you are having a good time..
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