Alcatraz essay

Imagine you are told exactly when you put forward eat or shower and when you have to go to bed and when you must wake up. Well some of the prison houseers on Alcatraz Island were treated in such a way. If you were a prisoner on Alcatraz Island, every aspect of your life would be controlled by a higher(prenominal) authority. If you like 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 can forget about that too. Alcatraz has a long history of transformation as to how it came to be known as the inescapable prison island.This reputation did not hold in 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 shady place containing many an(prenominal) forgotten memories and lost ghosts. Though no one really knows every matter that went on within the concealed walls of the old prison, it still manages to trap the interests of millions of hoi polloi who visit the national park each day on the small island in the San Francisco Bay. Not only has it trapped the interests of those millions of visitors, barely 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 root word of pelicans from which the island acquired its name (Alcatraces means pelicans in Spanish). In 1847, the United States Government began view Alcatraz as more than just an island, but also an excellent location for a military fort by 1853, a State of the Art military fortress was protecting the Western half of the United States against any foreign invasion.With the gust 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 isolation of the island made it an excellent candidate for a prison. The prison po pulation 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 city jails to Alcatraz.With the island becoming more a prison and less(prenominal) 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 thus ending the days of gardening and baseball games.In 1963, however, payable 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 trouble with high costs just as the United States had. In 1971, their proble ms ended when they saw the island go up in flames, badly prejudicial 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 throw Alcatraz part of the newly opened Golden Gate 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 cease to capture the amazement and interest of onlookers like you and I. That small, haunted, and mysterious island on the coast of San Francisco that treasures so many memories pass on always be known as The Rock.