Please bring your own pen/pencil to sign the log. This small cache is on a dead end county road. It has been placed at a knoll where the visitor has a full view of McNeil Island which use to be the home of a Federal Penitentary
McNeil Island is an island in western Puget Sound, located just west of Steilacoom, Washington, with a land area of 17.177 km² (6.6319 sq mi). It lies just north of Anderson Island. Fox Island is to the north, across Carr Inlet. To the west McNeil Island is separated from Key Peninsula by Pitt Passage. The Washington mainland lies to the east, across the south basin of Puget Sound. The island has been owned by the government for most of its history and has been home to the McNeil Island Corrections Center from 1875 until 2011.[1] Prior to its closing on April 1, 2011, it was the last remaining island prison in the country.[1][2][3]
In November 2010, the Washington State Department of Corrections announced its plans to close the penitentiary by 2011, thereby saving $14 million in the process. A detention center for violent sexual offenders is to remain on the island.[2]
The McNeil Island Historical Society was chartered in 2010 shortly after the closing of the prison for the purpose of educating the public about, and preserving, the rich history of McNeil Island.[4]
History
It was named in 1841 by Charles Wilkes during the United States Exploring Expedition in honor of Captain William Henry McNeill of the Hudson's Bay Company. McNeill was at Fort Nisqually in 1841 and greeted Wilkes upon arrival in southern Puget Sound.
The Robert A. Inskip expedition of 1846 named the island Duntze, after Captain John A. Duntze of the Royal Navy. In 1847, during the British map reorganization project, Henry Kellett restored the earlier name McNeil.[5]
The United States government bought land on McNeil Island in 1870 and opened a federal penitentiary there in 1875. By 1937 the federal government, which had been accumulating parcels of land adjacent to the penitentiary, had purchased all the land on the island and compelled its last residents to leave. The federal penitentiary's most famous inmates were probably Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz," who was held there from 1909 to 1912; Charles Manson, who was an inmate from 1961 to 1966 for trying to cash a forged government check; and Alvin Karpis, who was an inmate until 1971 for operating as point man for Ma Barker's gang in the 1930s. Karpis was the only person arrested by J. Edgar Hoover, and was released soon after Hoover died.
Washington state took over the penitentiary from the federal government in 1981. It is now called McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC). Since Washington was not a state when the prison was formed, it has been a territorial, federal, and state prison.
McNeil Island Cemetery and Prison
Land for the McNeil Island Cemetery was donated by island pioneers, Eric Nyberg and his wife, Martha, and the first of many burials was in October 1905. When the island's residents were forced to leave in 1936, the cemetery was closed and all remains were exhumed and reburied in cemeteries on the mainland.[6]
At the time of its closing, it was the only prison left in North America that was only accessible by boat or air. It was the site of the state's primary Special Commitment Center (SCC), where sexually violent predators are indefinitely committed for treatment after completing their standard prison sentences. Not only is there a main building that held the majority of inmates, but on the other side of the island, there is an annex which housed low risk inmates, and those who were scheduled for release. It was once a military encampment as well as a military prison for a short time during the 1800s. At one point, the prison was almost self-sustaining in the way of agriculture/farm and as a dairy farm, that was manned and operated by the inmates.
Long threatened with closing due to the high cost of operating the prison, it was made official in late 2010 to close the prison by 2011. The prison's remaining 500 low-risk inmates were integrated into other state prisons.[2] The prison officially closed on April 1, 2011.[1]
PLEASE SCREW LID OFF OF CONTAINER!