The Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum in Rawlins is the perfect place to experience outlaw history. Indeed, this historic state penitentiary housed some of the west’s most infamous outlaws.
Listed on The National Registry of Historic Places, the original buildings opened as a musuem in 1988.
What’s in the Wyoming Frontier Prison?
In the eighty years from 1901 to 1981, during which the original Wyoming State Penitentiary (renamed the Wyoming Frontier Prison when it opened as a museum) in Rawlins was in use, some 13,500 inmates called it “home.”
However, as David and I learned on our visit, the Frontier Prison didn’t feel anything homelike.
A guided tour takes you through life in the prison:
- Intake room: Men from up to 40 rooms at a time showered here in cold water (no hot water until 1978). In the early days, those who didn’t want to wash were sprayed down by the guards.
- Dining room: Kitchen duty was the best job for prisoners. After a 1955 riot, a guard armed with a submachine gun stood watch over every meal.
- Library: Big windows allowed for lots of light to read a collection that featured more law books than a university of the time.
- Cell blocks: 1901 (104 cells in Cell Block A), 1904 added 32 cells to Block A, 1916 death house/death row with 6 cells, Cell Block B in 1950, and Cell Block C maximum security with 36 cells in 1966.
- Museum displays of such things as original striped uniforms and confiscated inmate-made weapons.
- Exercise yard: the Old Pen‘s fence and guard towers are still intact.
Early inmates had a baseball team and occasionally used the yard to play local teams.
Early Days at Frontier Prison
When Wyoming neared statehood in 1890, the state made plans to build and manage its own penal system. Earlier, during its years as a Territory, the Federal government had built and managed the Wyoming Territorial Penitentiary at what’s now the city of Laramie.
However, money was tight for the new state, and it took awhile to actually get the new prison built. And there certainly weren’t any frills or luxuries included in the costs.
What was life like for prisoners at the Frontier Prison in the early 1900s?
Originally, none of the cells were heated. If prisoners were lucky, the temperature stayed at 20 degrees or so warmer than outside even on freezing winter days until radiators were installed in some parts of the prison. Then, these areas could be heated all the way up to 50 degrees! Parts of the prison never did get heat, as we learned on our early June tour. Whether the shivers I felt were from the passing ghosts of those who had lived in the frosty cells, or the lightweight sweater I wore — I couldn’t tell.
Prison life in the early 1900s was anything but fun. While prisoners may have spent their days shivering, they were at least fed. In fact, prisoners loved kitchen duty, the best job in the prison. Early on in the prison’s history, an elderly woman, Esther Higgins, even brought home baking for the entire population. Needless to say, she was well-loved.
As we learned from our tour guide, Dawn, the prison was built at the end of the wild west in early 1900s Wyoming. There weren’t a lot of standards in security, so the prison staff had to learn on the fly. One of the first things they discovered was that prisoners didn’t have much trouble picking the skeleton key locks on the first cell doors and attempting escapes. After all, those locks were pretty simple.
In fact, the prison had to replace all those first locks with something more secure. And if you’re thinking a different kind of lock, you’re almost right. In 1917, the prison installed the Boston Bar system that could lock down an entire tier with a single switch.
While the prison was for men, eleven women were incarcerated in its earliest years. The most infamous was Annie Bruce, a 14-year-old who murdered her father with Strychnine poison.
The prison has even been used as a movie set. In 1987, before it opened as a museum, the movie, Prison, starring Viggo Mortensen was filmed here.
Linda’s Pick of the Exhibits
My favorite exhibit — not to sound ghoulish or anything — was death row.
Of course, not all of the prisoners of the Frontier Prison lived to walk away. In fact, 14 were executed — some believe their ghosts still walk in the dark places around the prison.
In the beginning, our guide, Dawn, explained, there was a self-executing system in place. I, of course, had to ask how it worked.
The execution chamber — or room — was on the second floor. And as was customary in the old west for those sentenced to meet their maker, the sentence was death by hanging.
Ideally, the men in the gallows died quickly of a broken neck. However, it seems that only four of the nine on death row here during that period were so lucky. The others all had to hang until the life squeezed out of them. Now, that makes it easy to see why they could still haunt the gallows.
In 1931, the prison added the gas chamber. Five men died there.
To me, the cylinder looked more like something a science fiction writer from the 1800s might have described to descend into the depths of the sea rather than a chamber meant to gas someone to death. However, I guess it had the advantage of being small, so didn’t require a lot of gas to end a life.
Of course, there are also other parts of the prison that are particularly gruesome, like the sensory deprivation room — here, prisoners were kept in absolute darkness — and not even allowed to lie down.
Indeed, it was a time when being condemned to a Federal penitentiary was definitely something to be avoided. However, there were those who still took risks, wagered their freedom and lost.
Linda’s Road Trip Tips
We visited the Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum during a road trip through Montana and Wyoming. It was for the greater part a wild west themed adventure that included the amazing Range Riders Museum in Miles City, Montana, and the Rosebud County Museum in Forsythe, Montana.
While not a western attraction, we also discovered the luxurious classic cars and petroleum collectibels at the Frontier Auto Museum in Gillette, Wyoming on that trip.
We arrived in Rawlins in time for lunch, which we enjoyed at Cappy’s Restaurant and Bar. They served a great hot beef sandwich!
Who Should Visit the Wyoming Frontier Prison?
If you’re traveling on I-90 through Wyoming, I highly recommend the prison as a stop.
The Wyoming Frontier Prison is a fascinating step back into the past. It’s a museum that’s sure to shock teens, as they see another perspective of what being sent to prison was like a century ago.
If you have an interest in the outlaws of the old west, you’ll find lots of interesting historical tidbits in the displays and on the guided tour.
Most parts of the museum aren’t heated, so if you visit during the winter months or even spring (we visited in early June), take sweatshirts or a jacket. During our visit, David was recovering from a broken leg and was unable to climb the stairs to see the gas chambers. So, anyone with mobility issues will be restricted to the lower levels.
How Do You Visit the Wyoming Frontier Prison?
The Frontier Prison Museum is located at 500 West Walnut in historic Rawlins, Wyoming.
Website: http://www.wyomingfrontierprison.org/
Visitors to the museum have free limited access to a few exhibits but must join a tour to see the interior of the prison, so you’ll need to check the website for hours. There’s a small admission fee, which had to be paid in cash when we visited. Check the website to confirm the current fee.
If you’re interested in ghost hunting, the museum has various events each October (it’s usually closed for regular touring through the last two weeks of October).
Take a virtual tour with this YouTube Video: Inside the Old Death House – A Wyoming Prison Tour
Keep up-to-date with what’s happening with the Frontier Prison Facebook page.
Start planning your visit with Google Maps.
Reference(s)
HMdb.org. (n.d.). Wyoming State Penitentiary. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=89706
Van Pelt, L. (2014, November 8). Wyoming’s first state prison. WYOhistory.org.
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyomings-first-state-prison
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