Alcatraz Island

The prison is the smallest part of this island's story, and the Park Service says so first.

Alcatraz sits about 1.25 miles off San Francisco in the bay, 22 acres of rock measuring 1,675 feet by 590. The National Park Service lists its layers in order: Civil War fortress, military prison, federal prison, bird sanctuary, first lighthouse on the West Coast, and the birthplace of the American Indian Red Power movement.

That lighthouse is still the oldest operating one on the West Coast. The seabird colony is real and busy, mostly western gulls, cormorants and egrets, and there are rock pools around the edges.

The federal penitentiary ran from 1934 until 21 March 1963, and its reputation came from the water rather than the walls. Strong tidal currents and cold made escape close to impossible. Across 29 years the prison claimed that nobody ever succeeded. 36 prisoners made 14 attempts, two of them trying twice. 23 were caught alive, six were shot and killed, two drowned, and five are listed as missing and presumed drowned. The most violent failure was the Battle of Alcatraz, on 2 May 1946.

The famous one was 11 June 1962. Frank Morris and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin spent roughly three months widening a vent using sharpened spoons and a drill made from a vacuum cleaner motor, then filed down the bolts of a roof vent. They built dummy heads out of papier-mâché and finished them with real hair clippings so the nightly count would pass. Then they went into the bay on rafts made from prison raincoats and life preservers, an idea they took from magazines. They are believed to have drowned. No bodies were ever found, and people still argue about it.

From November 1969 the island was occupied for more than 19 months by Native American activists, and the Park Service calls that period perhaps the most influential in its history. Alcatraz passed to the Department of the Interior in 1972 and became part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986 and now takes nearly 1.4 million visitors a year.