Alcatraz Island
Alcatraz Island, located in San Francisco Bay, is renowned for its history as a federal prison from 1934 to 1963. The island's isolated location and reputation as an inescapable prison earned it the nickname "The Rock." Today, Alcatraz is a popular tourist attraction and a symbol of the challenges and triumphs of the American justice system.
3 Key excerpts on "Alcatraz Island"
eBook - ePubUnderstanding American Icons
An Introduction to Semiotics
- Arthur Asa Berger(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 15 Alcatraz Prison Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down and transfers its last prisoners. At it’s [sic] peak period of use in [the] 1950s, “The Rock, or “”America’s Devil Island,” housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility. Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable. The twelve-acre rocky island, one and a half miles from San Francisco, featured the most advanced security of the time. Some of the first metal detectors were used at Alcatraz. Strict rules were enforced against the unfortunate inmates who had to do time at Alcatraz. Nearly complete silence was mandated at all times. Alcatraz was first explored by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who called it Isla de los Alcatraces (Pelicans) because of all the birds that lived there. It was sold in 1849 to the U.S. government. The first lighthouse in California was on Alcatraz. It became a Civil War fort and then a military prison in 1907. The end of its prison days did not end the Alcatraz saga. In March 1964, a group of Sioux claimed that the island belonged to them due to a 100-year-old treaty. Their claims were ignored until November 1969 when a group of eighty-nine Native Americans representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island. They stayed there until 1971 when AIM was finally forced off the island by federal authorities. The following year, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now open for tourism. www.history.com/this-day-in-history/alcatraz-closes-its-doors Alcatraz has the distinction of being the most famous prison in the United States and having the best location—in the San Francisco Bay, with a spectacular view of the San Francisco skyline—of any prison in America...
eBook - ePub- Rachel Brahinsky, Alexander Tarr(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
...Centrally, even with their reputation as some of the most consciously “green” places in the nation, North Bay counties are in no way immune to the intense effects of anthropogenic climate change—that is, climate change caused by humans. The sprawling built environment that North Bay residents have created, and their collective “management” of nature, have created an immensely dangerous landscape. This context seems to make the work of documenting what is here and what has been here before even more important. ■ ■ ■ 4.1 Alcatraz Island Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, CA 94133 Beyond the kitschy “I Escaped Alcatraz” T-shirts for sale at every tourist shop in San Francisco lies the story of the immensely brutal beginnings of federal maximum-security prisons, and, not unrelated, of the center of a powerful moment in the American Indian struggle for self-determination. If you visit, you’ll be regaled with stories of how the federal government locked men in cages, with notoriously poor living conditions and strict control by violent guards. You’ll be asked to find a thrill in imagining yourself locked up with “America’s worst criminals.” You’ll join the company of about 1.4 million people that annually visit the island, now under the control of the National Park Service. Indeed, alongside trolley cars and the Golden Gate Bridge, the prison-island is among the best-known icons of the San Francisco Bay. Throughout its modern history, Alcatraz has been a site of interwoven moments of tragedy and revolutionary resistance by Indigenous people. The first two American Indian prisoners known to be incarcerated there were part of a group of Modoc leaders captured by the US Army near the modern California-Oregon border. In the 1890s, Alcatraz caged a group of Hopi men who had refused to send their children to federal schools (where their language and culture would be ripped from them) and refused to abandon their own collective agricultural practices for US-style private property...
eBook - ePubAntebellum and Civil War San Francisco
A Western Theater for Northern & Southern Politics
- Monika Trobits(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- The History Press(Publisher)
...“Alcatraz Island suggest[ed] the appearance of a battleship permanently anchored in defense of the Bay.” 61 In 1846, John Frémont, acting in the capacity of American military governor of California, bought the island for $5,000 on behalf of the federal government. In November 1850, just two months after California became the thirty-first state, President Fillmore issued an executive order stating that Alcatraz and nearby Angel Island be set aside as military reservations. Sandstone from the quarry at Angel Island was used to construct the fortifications on Alcatraz (and at Fort Point). The first fully operational lighthouse on the West Coast was placed on Alcatraz Island in 1854. Fort Alcatraz was fully fortified by 1858 and at the start of the Civil War featured ninety-one cannons, eight officers and approximately 361 soldiers; the island was the most heavily fortified site on the West Coast. Alcatraz housed civilian and military prisoners, along with menacing Confederate sympathizers and Southern privateers then operating on the West Coast. The number of prisoners on the island at any given time fluctuated and numbered about four dozen by the end of the war in 1865. Fort Point at Golden Gate Straits, looking north toward Marin County. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge spans the straits, extending over a portion of the fort. Courtesy San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. Nearby Angel Island had been a popular site for duels for over a decade by the time formal fortifications on the island began. In 1863, batteries and buildings for a military post were constructed. The camp was given the name of Camp Reynolds in honor of Major General John F. Reynolds, who had died a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg. The camp would eventually include officers’ quarters, enlisted men’s barracks and a chapel. Soldiers from the fort on Alcatraz had, as early as the 1860s, designated that island as a “rock” and came to Angel Island to establish vegetable gardens...
