Wyoming’s Frontier Prison

Sunlight trickles through the autumn leaves casting a beautiful glow. Birds chirp, deer graze, and butterflies flit across the startlingly green lawn. Apart from the barred windows and catwalk overgrown with ivy, you’d never imagine this place had once been a home for convicted thieves and murderers. 14 of which were killed for their crimes.

Wyoming’s frontier prison in Rawlins opened its doors in 1904, over a hundred years ago. Today, from the outside the prison feels much more like an old and crumbling enchanted castle, a place to enjoy a sunny day, but back then it was a different world. Overcrowded and dimly lit cells filled with some of WY’s finest criminals the frontier prison was more of a nightmare. For many years there was no running water and there was no electricity. And with the prison’s inadequate heating I imagine the winters were unbearable.

Inmates were rowdy (they even burned down the prison broom factory during a riot…and then the shirt factory they built to replace it), but the guards had ways of dealing with that. Solitary confinement (where they locked prisoners nude in the dungeon), whipping at the punishment pole, and I’m told guards would even grab wayward hands stretching out the bars and bend them painfully back. For those who found themselves facing execution the old penitentiary used two different methods. The gallows and the gas chamber.

But the death penalty and guards weren’t the only thing to fear. Inmates were not only keen to harm their jailors, but also each other. Poisoned meals, stabbings, beatings, lynching, the list of ways fellow inmates could kill one another were limited only by their imagination, and with all that time on their hands they had a lot of imagination to offer. Whatever could be used as a weapon was, and often times with deadly accuracy.

Many escapes were masterminded, and many inmates and guards died as a result of them. Because of all the deaths, people say that the prison is haunted. The show “Ghost Adventures” even filmed an episode at the old pen. Of course, that wasn’t the frontier prison’s first camera debut. In 1987 they filmed the movie “Prison,” a story of the vengeful ghost of a man executed for crimes he didn’t commit, starring Viggo Mortensen. (They say they even used real inmates as extras in the movie.)

Today, Wyoming’s frontier prison is open for tours. Educational and chilling, you follow your tour guide through the decrepit old prison as they describe horror after horror. They even offer to lock you in a cell or give you the opportunity to sit in the gas chamber if you’re willing. I mean, who wouldn’t want to sit in a chair five men had died in?

Museum & Tour Schedule: Call (307) 324-4422 or visit their site www.wyomingfrontierprison.org