THE OLD MONTANA PRISON

April 27,2009

Here we are at the old Montana Prison in Deer Lodge. Talk about incentive to stay nice and honest! This prison was started in 1896. The first cell house was divided into two sections by a two-foot thick wall. the smaller section held up to 32 youths, the larger section could hold up to 258 men. the cell house had no running water or sewer facilities. each cell had two buckets. one for sewage, one for water-as I said-you needed a reason to be nice? The prison underwent many revision and expansions over the years. During the 1893 depression,warden frank Conley instituted a program of prison labor for the necessary expansions, including the great rock wall, maximum security building, and the theatre.Prison crews built 500 miles of road at Flathead Lake,MacDonald Pass, and most of the roads around Deer Lodge. They even built much of Montana State hospital and Montana Tuberculosis sanitarium. Conley leased and owned 11 ranches-all were totally or partly run by prison inmates.In 1916, 50% of all prison inmates lived and worked outside prison walls. While the prisoners were in the prison, they did make some beautiful crafts-and a lot of them are on exhibit there. Beautiful frames woven from cigarette packs-horsehair items and more. also a lot of contraband was on display-really interesting!
While we did enjoy and appreciate all of the exhibits of the prison-it was a bit spooky and creepy-personally, I liked the ranch waaay better!!-and no, there were no porcupine sightings-but the old theatre is full of pigeons-eek!