Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre spit of rock surrounded by the deadly tides of San Francisco Bay, opened for its most notorious business when a group of federal prisoners arrived on this day in history, August 11, 1934.
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary housed many of America's most dangerous criminals for just 29 years — before closing in 1963 after its island operations proved far more costly than mainland-based prisons.
"Alcatraz was America's premier maximum-security prison, the final stop for the nation's most incorrigible prisoners," reports AlcatrazHistory.com.
"The Rock" is best remembered as a Hall of Fame of hoodlums.
Its most notorious inmates included gangsters James "Whitey" Bulger, Al Capone and George "Machine Gun" Kelly, plus infamous "Birdman of Alcatraz" Robert Stroud and "Public Enemy No. 1" Alvin Karpis.
The latter was one of only four career criminals who earned the infamous label from the FBI — and the only one captured alive. Karpis served 26 years at Alcatraz, longer than any other prisoner.
Among other haunting traits, the Lithuanian-American gangster who terrorized the Midwest during the Great Depression had his fingerprints erased by an underworld doctor in 1934.
"Most of the prisoners incarcerated there were not well-known gangsters, but prisoners who refused to conform to the rules and regulations at other federal institutions, who were considered violent and dangerous, or who were considered escape risks," reports the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in its history of The Rock.
"If a man did not behave at another institution, he could be sent to Alcatraz, where the highly structured, monotonous daily routine was designed to teach an inmate to follow rules and regulations," the BOP writes.
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"At Alcatraz, a prisoner had four rights: food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Everything else was a privilege that had to be earned."
Stroud was probably the island's most famous inmate, thanks to the success of the 1962 movie, "The Birdman of Alcatraz" starring Burt Lancaster.
Stroud became an expert on canaries and wrote two books on the birds while imprisoned in Leavenworth Penitentiary.
"Stroud never had any birds at Alcatraz, nor was he the grandfatherly person portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the well-known movie," writes the Bureau of Prisons.
He was, rather, an extremely dangerous individual, who began his 54-year-career behind bars after killing a bartender at age 19; and who later killed a Leavenworth guard in front of 1,100 inmates in the prison mess hall.
He routinely had violent scuffles with other prisoners.
Thirty-six men tried to escape from Alcatraz: 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during the escape, and two drowned, according to AlcatrazHistory.com.
The other five were listed as missing and presumed drowned.
"Officially, no one ever succeeded in escaping from Alcatraz," the site states.
Alcatraz earned its name Isla de los Alcatraces, the "Island of the Pelicans," from Spanish explorer Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala, who sailed San Francisco Bay in 1775.
The seabird haven was turned into a Spanish fortification before it was sold to the United States in 1849 — just as the California Gold Rush descended on San Francisco and created a vibrant West Coast boom town.
Alcatraz was the site of the first California lighthouse in 1854, welcomed a U.S. Army detachment in 1859 and became a military prison in 1868, according to History.com.
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"In addition to recalcitrant U.S. soldiers, prisoners included rebellious Indian scouts, American soldiers fighting in the Philippines who had deserted to the Filipino cause, and Chinese civilians who resisted the U.S. Army during the Boxer Rebellion," notes History.com.
Alcatraz Island today is a popular San Francisco tourist attraction operated by the National Park Service.
