The HISTORY of 'the ROCK'!
  Opened for the first group of Federal Prisoners in August 1934, the history of this infamous island - as home to a prison for troublesome men - goes back nearly eighty years prior.

The U.S. Army 'turned over the keys' to the newly created U.S. Bureau of Prisons in 1933, after keeping military prisoners - mostly U.S. Soldiers - here since 1859*.
*see Fort Alcatraz page

The Bureau of Prisons spent most of a year - and millions of dollars renovating the massive 500 cell Prison Building - adding six lofty gun-towers, metal detectors and high-fences topped with razor wire.

U.S. Penitentiary - Alcatraz, aka to become  known as 'the Rock', would be staffed with experienced 'Correctional Officers' and Administrative staff culled from other federal and state prisons, including it's first Warden, James A. Johnston - who had run California's San Quentin State Prison, and would earn one of the first colorful nicknames given by  the 'Con's - 'Saltwater' Johnston. Evidently, Warden Johnston experimented with using bay water to flush the toilets in the prison cells.

Warden Johnston was somewhat of  a prison 'reformer' - fancied being known as the 'Golden Rule Warden' - for rewarding prisoners with sentence reductions for working, and for staying out of additional trouble. He also was known as a a strict 'enforcer' - who had presided over prisoner executions by hanging - while serving at San Quentin, aka ...'the Q'.

Johnston created the fabled and never wavering 'Alcatraz Routine' served up to the first prisoners arriving here from the other, and much more lenient, federal 'Pens', like U.S.P.-Leavenworth and U.S.P- Atlanta. This would be America's first 'Super-High Maximum-Security' Federal Prison and it would live up to that distinction in many ways.

(work in progress, to be continued)