Incarcerating Outlaws in the Old West

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Hello, readers! For the past several months, I’ve been sharing some of the fun facts I had the pleasure of researching for my recent release, Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery. This month, I am sharing some interesting tidbits about the jails and prisons of the Old West—and how some prisoners escaped these places.

 

This isn’t my first time writing about jails—either on this blog or in one of my stories. So to recap a previous post that I wrote several years back, here’s a bit about the jails in the Old West. 

 

What were Old West jails really like?

 

Many Hollywood movies and television shows depict a rather secure, up-to-date building with multiple cells and modern-looking bars on the windows and doors—but the reality was usually much cruder. Sometimes, a jail was nothing more than a large tree, boulder, or telegraph pole with a prisoner tied or chained to it. Other times, the jail was a deep pit dug into the ground with wood planks covering the hole, and a lawman standing guard.

The Wickenburg "Jail"

 

When there was a more traditional jail facility, these varied greatly. They would’ve been constructed of whatever material was most readily available in the area, be it milled wood planks, logs, stones, brick, or adobe. Many were separate single-room buildings—with a door and little else. No indoor plumbing. No modern conveniences. A bucket for a toilet—if that. (Can you imagine the stench?) Often, these facilities were overcrowded, and illness and disease spread easily in such confines.

 

In some rare cases, a locality would put more money and effort into making their jail facilities liveable—building a “modern” jail with multiple cells, barred windows and doors for ventilation, a room for the guards to sleep in, a kitchen to prepare meals, and a space for the inmates to stretch their legs or exercise. 

 

What happened once an outlaw was tried and convicted of a years-long sentence—where did he go then?

 

It all depended on the state or territory. If there was a prison available, the inmate was transported to that facility. But if one hadn’t been built in that territory or state yet, the inmate continued his stay in the local jail for the length of his sentence. (Thus, the overcrowding). As the old saying goes, idle hands are the devil’s playground, so if left to sit very long with nothing to do, rebellions or riots sometimes ensued. To keep these down, the prisoners might be flogged or put in a separate location for solitary confinement. Or, often they were relegated to manual labor in chain gangs.

 

Once such example was in the Arizona Territory. As the population of Arizona grew, it was decided that they would build a territorial prison and Yuma was chosen as the appropriate site. Seven men with multi-year sentences were pulled from their respective local jails and sent to the blazing-hot desert and forced to build the dreaded Yuma Territorial Prison, then incarcerated in the very facility they’d built themselves. (Though from what I’ve read about that facility, it had a library, a school program where inmates learned the Three R’s, and more “amenities” that made it rather more luxurious than many other prisons).

Yuma Territorial Prison

 

How secure were the jails in the Old West?

 

Oftentimes, not very secure at all! In fact, one article I read in my research of jails described them as “leaky”—meaning they were easy to escape from. You’ve got stories of notorious escapes like Butch Cassidy, who used a smuggled tool to pick the lock on his cell door and escape his jail. In less well-known instances, I read about an outlaw gang coming to the jail and lifting the corner of the building off its foundation just far enough that their compatriot could squirm out under the wall. In cases of jails made from adobe, the walls could be dug through fairly easily, so if left unsupervised for long enough (which was often the case—as many towns didn’t have the inmates guarded overnight), the prisoners had ample time to dig out and escape. In another case, I read of a heavy rainstorm kicking up a flash flood, which washed out the corner of a jailhouse, allowing the inmate to slip into the water and be “washed away” by the current. Then, of course, there’s the “Great Escape” from Yuma (since I have already mentioned that territorial prison). In that instance, three inmates managed to tunnel out from the prison and escape across hundreds of miles of brutal desert terrain. So even the larger prisons weren’t immune to escapes.

 

It’s Your Turn: Tell me what you find most interesting about the incarceration practices of the Old West.

 

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered western novels at twelve when she swiped the only “horse” book from her brother’s bookshelf. Across the next decade, she devoured westerns and fell in love with the genre. While attaining a B.A. in writing from the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. She has finaled in and won numerous writing competitions and appeared on various best-seller lists. Besides writing, she’s been a business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, a historical researcher, a publisher, and a full-time homemaker. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.

 

Available now from your favorite bookseller:

Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery 

Wanted: Family, Love, and Justice

One Old West Mystery Solved Throughout Three Short Romantic Stories

Separated as children when they were adopted out to different families from an orphan train, the Braddock siblings have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice.

 

Youngest child, Callie, has pushed past her insecurities to pursue a career as a Pinkerton agent. Middle child, Andi, has spent years studying law under her adoptive father’s tutelage. And the eldest and only son, Rion, is a rough-and-tumble bounty hunter. 

 

When the hunt for a serial killer with a long history of murders reunites the brother and sisters in Cambria Springs, Colorado, they find themselves not only in a fight for justice, but also a fight to keep their newly reunited family intact. How will they navigate these challenges when further complicated by unexpected romances?