This solitude ended when California was annexed by the United States during the Mexican–American war of 1846–1848. For the next seventy-five years, the island was noted on maps but otherwise deserted.
No escape hospital full#
For this reason, when Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala sailed into the area in 1775, he bestowed the island with its full name, which translates to “Island of the Pelicans.” (Today, there are no pelicans, but the island is home to hawks, ravens, geese, finches, hummingbirds, and seagulls). While the island is sparse in vegetation, it is a haven for birds.
In contrast, the island probably began its career as a fishing and hunting ground for the Ohlone and Miwok Native American people. Isolated, rocky, and whipped by salt-laden cold winds, lore claims that the indigenous people avoided the area and considered it evil and cursed. Enshrouded in fog, and in mystery, what is fact and what is fiction about Alcatraz?Īn island in the San Francisco Bay, “The Rock” lies less than two miles from the mainland. Gross inaccuracies and melodramatic accounts are reproduced in books, movies, documentaries, and online. Now, as an abandoned prison with a colorful history, Alcatraz has become not only the subject of numerous movies but also of numerous myths. During its nearly three decades of operation, Alcatraz was the Hollywood of prisons with an infamous cast of high-profile villains, starring tax cheat gang lord Al “Scarface” Capone murderer Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz” gang member Alvin “Creepy” Karpis bank robber and kidnapper George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Floyd Hamilton, Bonnie and Clyde’s moll and one of the prison’s escape artists. Yet another claimant to the title of America’s “most haunted” place, Alcatraz certainly reigns as one of the world’s most notorious jails.
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