Yuma Territorial Prison

Yuma Territorial Prison opened on 1 July 1876, when its first seven inmates moved into cells that prisoners had been put to work building, and it closed in 1909. Its own town gave it two nicknames at once: the hell hole, for the desert heat and the tuberculosis that killed more men there than every escape and execution combined, and the Country Club on the Colorado, because it had electricity before Yuma did, along with showers, a hospital and the largest library in the Territory. The Dark Cell was not part of the plan; it was dug out of the granite in 1894, a windowless chamber with an iron cage inside it five feet high. On Thursday 27 October 1887 the convict Librado Puebla seized Superintendent Thomas Gates at the north sally port as a human shield and stabbed him, and a lifer named Barney K. Riggs ran into the crossfire, took a fallen revolver and shot Puebla dead. Four convicts died, none escaped, and Riggs was pardoned that December. Today the ruin is a state historic park that sells ghost tours — and the museum's own history pages, for years, never mentioned a ghost at all.

The Arizona Territorial Legislature authorised a prison at Yuma in 1875 and budgeted $25,000 for it. Ground was broken on 28 April 1876 on a granite bluff above the Colorado River, and — in a detail the site has never stopped repeating — some of the prisoners were put to work building their own cells. The first seven inmates moved in on 1 July 1876. The prison ran for thirty-three years and closed in 1909, when overcrowding forced the transfer of everyone still inside to a new prison at Florence, built under Superintendent Thomas Rynning, one of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Yuma carried two nicknames at the same time, and both were earned. Prisoners called it a hell hole: the summer heat, the ball and chain, the Snake Den, and tuberculosis, which killed more men there than every escape attempt, murder and execution combined. Yuma townspeople called it the Country Club on the Colorado, and resented it, because the prison had electricity from 1884 — the first place in town to have it — along with forced ventilation, two bathtubs and three showers, a hospital that from 1885 was the only one for miles, a library of some 2,000 volumes that was the largest in the Territory, and a prison band. Fifteen different men served as superintendent in thirty-three years. They were political appointees of the Territorial Governor, paid $250 a month. The first woman admitted was Lizzie Gallagher, in 1878, the same year J. Lewis made the first escape; by 1891 the female population had grown enough that a separate cell and small yard had to be built. The Dark Cell was not part of the original plan. It was dug out of the granite in 1894, when discipline had become a problem: a windowless chamber cut into the rock with a strap-iron cage inside it, only five feet high, so that a man could sit or crouch but not stand. The most violent day in the prison's history was Thursday 27 October 1887, and our previous version of this page got it backwards. At about nine in the morning, as Superintendent Thomas Gates was leaving through the north sally port, the convict Librado Puebla pinned his arms from behind and marched him out in front of him as a human shield. Seven other prisoners rushed out behind them. One of them, José López, broke open Gates's desk in the office, took a revolver and opened fire on the guard Hartlee at the tank station. Hartlee, under orders from Gates himself to shoot, hit Puebla twice; wounded, Puebla stabbed Gates. The guard Rule and Hartlee together shot López down. At that point Barney K. Riggs — a prisoner serving life — ran out into the crossfire, picked up the fallen revolver, walked up to Puebla as the knife came up again and shot him dead, then turned to the wounded superintendent. The yard captain, Fred Fredly, was meanwhile wrestling a convict named Rivera who was trying to drive a pick into his head; the two of them went twenty feet down the embankment together. Four convicts were killed — Puebla, E. Bustamante, José López and J. Vásquez — one, A. Villa, was wounded, and three were unhurt. Not one man escaped. Gates survived his knife wound, and the neck injury troubled him for the rest of his life; the assistant superintendent who came running from inside the prison that morning, John Behan, was the former Cochise County sheriff who had been Wyatt Earp's adversary in Tombstone, and he replaced Gates as superintendent that same month. The Arizona Sentinel campaigned for Riggs from its next issue onward, the rest of the Territory's press joined in, and on a Saturday morning at the end of December 1887 Governor C. Meyer Zulick pardoned him. Riggs was shot dead at Fort Stockton, Texas, in 1902. Gates came back for a second term, and it is from that term that the sharpest surviving document dates: the Rules and Regulations for the Government and Discipline of the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma, printed in Tucson in 1895 with his name on the title page. It forbids any officer to strike a convict except in self-defence, reserves all punishment to the superintendent's personal direction, and — across the whole booklet, which uses the word "prisoner" ninety-two times and "cell" twenty-one — never once mentions the Dark Cell, solitary confinement, the ball and chain or bread and water. Whatever happened in the rock chamber happened at one man's discretion, unwritten. After 1909 the buildings were used by whoever needed them. Yuma Union High School, burned out of its own premises, rented four structures and held classes in the cellblocks and assemblies in the prison hospital from 1910 to 1914; when the Yuma team beat Phoenix in 1913 the losing Coyotes called them the Criminals, and the school board formally adopted the name in 1917. Yuma High is still the home of the Criminals. The county hospital used the site from 1914 to 1923. In 1927 the school paved its football field with adobe brick taken from the old prison walls. The Southern Pacific cut away the western third of Prison Hill for its new tracks. The Veterans of Foreign Wars leased the guards' quarters as a clubhouse from 1931 to 1960. Hoboes riding the freights slept in the cells through the 1920s and 1930s, and homeless families lived in them during the Depression. What is left standing today is what was left after all of that. The first calls to preserve the ruin came in the early 1930s; in 1939 local residents began raising money for the guard tower and a museum on the site of the mess hall, and Clarisa Windsor ran the museum for the City of Yuma from 1941 to 1960. On 4 October 1960 the city sold the prison to the Arizona State Parks Board for one dollar, and the park opened to the public on 1 January 1961, with Windsor as its first manager. In 2010 the state's parks funding crisis nearly closed it; a local group, the Yuma Chain Gang, raised the money to keep it open, and the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area has managed it ever since.

Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park is open, easy to visit and cheap. It is at 220 N. Prison Hill Road, Yuma, AZ 85364, telephone (928) 783-4771, and it is a state historic park managed on the ground by the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area rather than by Arizona State Parks staff — a consequence of the 2010 funding crisis that nearly closed it. Hours and prices checked on 14 August 2026, and both are worth re-checking before you set out. The park opens seven days a week: 08:30 to 16:00 from 1 June to 30 September, and 09:00 to 16:30 from 1 October to 31 May. It closes on Thanksgiving Eve, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Admission is $10 for adults aged 14 and over, $7 for young people aged 7 to 13, and free for children of 6 and under. Those short summer hours are not an oversight: this is the lower Sonoran desert, July afternoons routinely pass 45 °C, and most of the site is open ground with no shade. Carry water, and prefer the first hour after opening. A guided tour leaves daily at noon and is included in the admission price, as is the self-guided True Crimes Mystery card. The route takes in the viewing deck, the guard tower, the sally port through which Gates was dragged in 1887, the museum and theatre, the cellblock, the Dark Cell, the New Yard and the prison cemetery. There is parking at the main entrance, a separate south lot for RVs and tow vehicles, and overflow parking below Cemetery Hill. The museum is wheelchair accessible. Only service animals are admitted, and outside food is not allowed. If you specifically want the ghost material, it is sold separately and after dark: Paranormal Hotspots Night runs 21:00 to 02:00 on 9 and 10 May 2026 at $50 a ticket, and the park has run a larger annual after-hours event, The Witching Hour, around National Paranormal Day in early May. Those tickets sell out. Nothing on the daytime visit depends on them, and the daytime visit is the one that shows you the building.