Prison Trip

So I've had like a week of non-stop busy-ness... it's been crazy. I guess at a point life just speeds up... but this past week it's been one thing right after another. I'm looking forward to this next week not being nearly as busy.

The Saturday before last my mom, brother and I went to Jefferson City to take a tour of the old Missouri State Penitentiary. My mom had heard they were giving tours of this place and it sounded interesting to me. So we decided a day trip would be nice and luckily Keith was done with school so he was able to join us.

Now I'm not sure if anyone reading knows the history of this place - I didn't... but it has some serious history. For one, it's dubbed the "Bloodiest 47 acres in America." I guess it was quite the violent place! You always hear about Alcatraz as being a famous prison, but this place was bigger, opener longer, and contains a LOT of history. It opened in 1836 (and finally closed in 2004) and at one point housed over 6,000 prisoners. I mean look at this place... it's pretty epic looking...
The tour was given by a gentleman that was a guard in the prison for 30 years. You could just tell that he was very involved with what he was saying and had so many person stories. He really gave life to the place and if you could hear him talk when he didn't have PG it up, I can't imagine all the stories he has. He said at one point there's not a place in the prison that didn't involve a death of some type... a pretty violent place!

Onto some of my mom's pictures from the day... here's Keith in what I believe they referred to as the privilage cell block (mom or Keith remind me on that one.) What you can't tell is Keith is on the fourth story... heights don't really get to me that often, but something about this place was making my knees wobble... maybe b/c it was a little worn down... But I did walk across the cat walk... I just didn't look down...
And here I am exiting on the the cells. This cell has the only original doorway on it. As you can tell the old doors are very small.
What I didn't have a good picture of, but in this cell block in the basement next to the showers was a dungeon... like a serious dungeon. They would put the misbehavers down there with the lights off... it was so dark, like no light what so ever... I can't imagine what it would be like to be down there for days/week/months/years... and in one guy's case decades...

Here is another cell block... a newer version. It's kind of hard to think that this place only closed 7 years ago... with the peeling paint and such... but it's true.

And finally here's the gas chamber building
And here's Keith and I sitting in the gas chamber... behind those seats on the ground is where the gas was created and those windows are were the witnesses, press, and family would sit to watch the execution. I'm going to say the picture was blurry b/c of the ghosts... but I'd be lying if I said that was the case.
We took the four hour tour and I cannot say enough good things about it. There's also a four hour tour as well as a ghost tour at night. If you are ever in the Jeff City area you really should consider taking the tour. There's so much history right here in our very state. The land the prison sits on is in prime real estate area. I think they are considering tearing this place down. I'm planning on writing a letter to express how awesome I thought the tour was... but be sure to get there and see it for yourself! I bet taking the tour again with a different guide would provide even more interesting information... and there was a lot of places we didn't get to see... I bet they take you to some of those areas on four hour version.

To round out the day in Jeff City we ate at a old diner type of place... Oliver's? And then we got ice cream from none other than Central Dairy. It was great ice cream... just as how I remembered it.

Overall it was a great day trip to Jeff City!! And we had some great weather for it too!