Yuma Territorial Prison

Not to be confused with the Arizona State Prison Complex – Yuma.

The Yuma Territorial Prison
Main Gate to the Yuma Territorial Prison.
General information
Location	Yuma, Arizona, United States
Coordinates	32°43′37″N 114°36′54″W
Opened	1876
Website
www.yumaprison.org

The Yuma Territorial Prison is a former prison located in Yuma, Arizona, United States. Opened on July 1, 1876, and shut down on September 15, 1909. It is one of the Yuma Crossing and Associated Sites on the National Register of Historic Places (maintained by the National Park Service in the United States Department of the Interior) in the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area. The site is now operated as a historical museum by Arizona State Parks system as Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park.

History

Prison

Opened under the auspices and authority of the recently organized Arizona Territory (existed 1863-1912 under the status when still a U.S. territory, before admission to the Union as the 48th state in 1912), the famous American frontier Old West prison accepted its first inmate on July 1, 1876. For the next 33 years 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, served sentences there for various crimes ranging from murder to polygamy. The territorial prison was under continuous construction and repairs with labor provided by the prisoners. In 1909, the last prisoner left the old Territorial Prison for the newly constructed Arizona State Prison Complex, newly located and built in Florence, Arizona. Three years before the establishment of the new State of Arizona in 1912 (along with adjacent New Mexico Territory, also becoming the new State of New Mexico as the 47th state in the continental U.S.A.).

It was also the third historic park in Arizona. The state historic park also contains a graveyard where 104 of the prisoners are buried.

High school

The Yuma Union High School, local public secondary school after its previous longtime building suffered a disasterous fire in 1909, so it moved into and occupied briefly many of the old prison buildings a year later after it closed and the prisoners were moved to Florence. Various classrooms were set up temporarily in the old cellblocks and the hospital was used as an assembly hall, Yuma Union High was situated here for four years from 1910 to 1914. After the school moved to their new replacement buildings campus at its current modern site of 400 South 6th Avenue, the city of Yuma requisitioned the extensive old stone prison complex for a city jail after 1915.

Notable inmates

• Burt Alvord – Cochise County lawman and train robber
• Bill Downing – Train robber
• William J. Flake – Mormon pioneer imprisoned for violating the Edmunds Act
• Pearl Hart – stagecoach robber
• "Buckskin Frank" Leslie – gunfighter and killer of Billy Claiborne
• Ricardo Flores Magón – Mexican revolutionary, founder of the Partido Liberal Mexicano
• Pete Spence – outlaw involved in the Earp-Clanton feud

In popular culture

(Listed chronologically)
The infamous Yuma Territorial Prison has been featured or even just briefly mentioned in numerous American media of literature / novels / short stories or in feature / theatrical films and television series / episodes (usually in the Western film genre or later TV series, especially during the 1950s and 1960s:

• "Forty Lashes Less One", a 1972 western novel by Elmore Leonard about a planned prison break in 1909, the year the prison was closed.

• "Three-Ten to Yuma", a 1953 western short story written by Elmore Leonard, and also in two film adaptations:

• 3:10 to Yuma, the 1957 original (directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin),

and the 2007 remake, also titled 3:10 to Yuma, directed by James Mangold and starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.

• 26 Men, the 1957 episode "Incident at Yuma" of the syndicated western series of true stories of the Arizona Rangers, focuses on a prison break and the difficulty of gathering a posse faced by Captain Thomas H. Rynning, portrayed by Tristram Coffin.

• "Hell Hole Prison" season 12, episode 8 of the Travel Channel cable TV show Ghost Adventures was shot at the prison. focusing on its allegedly history of hauntings.

• The prison was one of the two featured stories on the 71st episode of the internet audio podcast And That's Why We Drink.

• Named as one of the "Top Haunted Destinations in America" by the national daily newspaper USA Today in October 2020.

Gallery of Photos

• 
  The main guard tower.
• 
  Cells and the yard.
• 
  Prison cells with courtyard.
• 
  Iron bunkbeds inside the prison.
• 
  A mugshot of Pete Spence at the Yuma Territorial Prison in 1883.
• 
  Pearl Hart at the prison in 1899.
• 
  Burt Alvord at the prison in 1904.
• 
  Bill Donning imprisoned in 1901.
• 
  Prison Cemetery.
• 
  Graves of prisoners.

See also

• Thomas H. Rynning – former warden of the prison
• Ben Daniels – former superintendent of the prison
• Clifton Cliff Jail – historic site in the Clifton Townsite Historic District of Clifton, Arizona
• Gleeson Jail – in Gleeson, Arizona
• Jose Maria Redondo – the "Father of the Yuma Territorial Prison"
• List of historic properties in Yuma, Arizona
• Johnny Behan Past warden

Further reading

• Joseph Stocker (May 1961). "City of Lost Hope". Arizona Highways. XXXVII (5): 36–39 – via Arizona Memory Project.

External links

• Yuma Territorial Prison Museum and Park – Historic Yuma AZ
• Arizona State Parks: Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park website
• AZ Department of Corrections: Early History, with Yuma Territorial Prison – Arizona Department of Corrections
• U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Yuma Territorial Prison
• Yuma Territorial Prison – ghosttowns.com