Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine

Two histories in one hole. Copper was dug here from 1707, the first chartered copper mine in the American colonies, and when it stopped paying, Connecticut put a prison in the workings instead: in 1773 it became the first state prison in America, and during the Revolution it held Loyalists. The convicts slept in the mine caverns, down a shaft, in the dark and the wet. You go down into those caverns on the tour, and it is genuinely grim in the best way. PUBLIC museum, East Granby.