alcatraz Essay -- essays research papers

An icon of power and strength, Alcatraz has become the single intimately perceptiblesymbol of American society. Situated in the San Francisco Bay, one cant help butbe drawn to the rocky shore, the dark walls, and the alone(predicate) light tower sanding coldagainst a picturesque sunset imagining what it would abide been like to beincarcerated in one of the worlds most infamous prisons. Discovered in 1775 by the Spanish explorer Juan Miguel de Ayala, La Isla de losAlcatraces was little more than a rock inhabited by a group of pelicans from whichthe island bears its name (Alcatraces meaning pelicans in Spanish). However, in1847 the US giving medication began to look at it as much more. Strategically placed atthe mouth of the San Francisco Bay it was the perfect site for a phalanx fort. By1853 a state of the art array fortress was protecting the westerly United Statesagainst foreign infiltration. In 1861, with outbreak of the Civil War, Alcatraz beganreceiving its first militar y prisoners. However, it wasnt until 1898 and the Spanish-American War that the isolation of the island that made it an impregnable militaryinstallation also made it an inescapable prison. During this war the prisoner people jumped from 26 to 450. That number spiked again as civil prisoners weretransferred from urban center jails after the famous 1906 earthquake. With the islandbecoming more and more a prison and less and less a military fort, a cell domiciliatewas built in 1912. This is generally felt to be the p...