Alcatraz essay

Imagine you are told exactly when you send word eat or shower and when you have to go to bed and when you must wake up. Well umteen another(prenominal) of the prisoners on Alcatraz Island were treated in such a way. If you were a prisoner on Alcatraz Island, all survey of your life would be controlled by a higher(prenominal) authority. If you worry to have a midnight snack every now and then, that luxury would be taken away. If you like to sit around and watch TV for hours, you muckle forget about that too. Alcatraz has a long biography of transformation as to how it came to be known as the inescapable prison island.This reputation did not cloture a handful of men to try and do the impossible and escape the island. Alcatraz, also known as The Rock, is a well-known yet inexplicable place containing many forgotten memories and lost ghosts. though no one really knows every topic that went on inside the c formerlyaled walls of the old prison, it still manages to trap the inter ests of millions of populate who visit the national park each twenty-four hour period on the pure island in the San Francisco Bay. Not simply has it trapped the interests of those millions of visitors, hardly it has also trapped mine as well.Discovered in 1775 by a Spanish explorer named Juan Miguel de Ayala, La Isla de los Alcatraces was nothing more than a small island inhabited by a collection of pelicans from which the island acquired its name (Alcatraces means pelicans in Spanish). In 1847, the united recites Government began view Alcatraz as more than still an island, but also an ex electric cubicleent location for a military fort by 1853, a State of the Art military fortress was protecting the western sandwich half of the United States against any foreign invasion.With the hit of the Civil War, Alcatraz began accepting its first military prisoners in 1861. However, it wasnt until the Spanish-American War in 1898 that the United States realized that the closing off of the island made it an excellent candidate for a prison. The prison population jumped from twenty-six to 450 during the war. That number sprang once more after the famous 1906 earthquake when prisoners were transferred from many San Francisco urban center jails to Alcatraz.With the island becoming more a prison and slight a military fort, it was decided that a cell house would be necessary. After the construction of the cell house in 1912, The Rock was born. In the 1920s many inmates were allowed to own small gardens of their own. Baseball fields were created and small teams were formed. It wasnt until the 1930s that Alcatraz went through dramatic changes constituting stricter rules than ever before then ending the days of gardening and baseball games.In 1963, however, due(p) to the high cost of running an island prison, Alcatraz was officially closed, never to be reopened as a prison. In 1969, a group of Native Americans claimed the island as their own but later ran into tro uble with high be honourable as the United States had. In 1971, their problems ended when they aphorism the island go up in flames, badly detrimental the lighthouse and many homes that used to house the cell guards and their families. The remaining Indians left after this fire and once again, Alcatraz was abandoned. The U.S. government decided it would be best to impart Alcatraz part of the newly opened Golden introduction Park. Today, the money it attracts from its visitors each year provides the operational costs for the island. Throughout all the changes Alcatraz has went, it has retained one thing up to this very day its deteriorating walls never leave office to capture the amazement and interest of onlookers like you and I. That small, haunted, and secluded island on the coast of San Francisco that treasures so many memories allow always be known as The Rock.