How Some Have Seen Alcatraz
This Island is chiefly composed of irregularly stratified sandstone covered with a thin coating of bird guano....The stone is full of seams in all directions which render it unfit for any building purpose & probably difficult to quarry...The island has no beach & but two or three points where small boats can land."
Lt. William Warner
U.S. Topographical Engineer
The Island is roughter than I had anticipated; very rough, steep, and broken on the Eastern portion...I have commenced the survey of the North West and South East portions of the island. The constance prevalance of high winds delays this work very much...The sandstone composing the Island is very friable; even where hardened on the surface it can be cut with a hatchet. Wrought iron spikes can be driven into the rock without much trouble.
Brig. General Joseph Totten
Chief of Engineers
This beats all countries for wind I ever inhabited. At 10 o'clock a.m., every day the sea breeze commences and it is no gentle zephyr I can assure you--The dust flies in every direction. The bay is covered with white caps making it worse crossing.
Lt. James Birdseye McPherson
Later General McPherson
[T]he buildings are chiefly clustered on the eastern slope of the island where they are protected from the ocean winds. Higher up, chicken houses and cow yards are seen, swelling the complement of domestic animals on the island. Along the roadside, as it nears the summit, are a succession of charming gothic cottages, occupied by the commanding officers of the garrison and their families, each with a little garden plot, and the voices of merry children make the air musical. On the summit proper, no implements of warfare....except the solid shot, 15 inches in diameter, which...cheerfully contribute to the adornment of the place, ranged in decorous rows, one above the other, around a tennis court, shielded from the still ocean breeze by a high wall, and lying in close proximity to a dainty garden, rich in fragrance and bloom.
Alta California
1885
All of Alcatraz should be devoted to fortifications...The island shall be dedicated exclusively and for all time to the purposes of defense.
Major General Arthur MacArthur
Commander, Military Department of the Pacific
[It] lies directly in the path of commerce, and, surmounted as it is with the rather conspicuous new prison building is perhaps more prominent in the view of the incoming passenger and more the subject of his inquiry and that of residents and visitors generally than any other object in the harbor...The buildings on Alcatraz constitute model detention barracks and the sole objection to continuing it as such is...the sentimental one that its prominence in the harbor advertises, in a way unfair to military service, the discipline of the Army.
Major General Enoch Crowder
U.S. Army Judge Advocate
THE STONE REJECTED BY THE BUILDER HAS BECOME THE TOP OF THE ARCH
THE OBJECT IS TO ACHIEVE A PERFECT CHARACTER
U.S. Army Mottos from Alcatraz
Funny how pretty that place looked from the outside.
Henry Larry
As we chugged across the water, and the island got higher ane nearer, I felt mighty blue....Our direction from the pier to the island was about northwest. We circled the island and came alongside a pier on the southeast side. They marched us out of our cabins, still in leg irons and handcuffs, and into a black truck with solid sides and grilled back doors. It looked like a police patrol wagon. I'm a poor judge at guessing distances. Maybe it is 125 or 150 yards in a straight line from the pier to the top of The Rock where the prison buildings are, but the road zig-zagged back and forth and coiled around, making it much longer. We climbed out of the wagon and I got my first good look at the prison building. It has three stories above the surface and one set down into the stone. It is built of rough concrete and iron....Mighty plain and easy to see were the guards in their steel towers, machine guns, automatic rifles and pistols around and on them. The inmates wore blue denim coveralls and blue flannel caps.
A.W. Davis
AZ-311
"Take a good look you bastards!" screams a large, six-foot, red-faced monster in a brass-buttoned, blue uniform decorated with five stars and four bars of gold cloth. He refers to the dozens of screws armed with riot guns, heavy Browning automatic .30-.06 rifles, and Thompson submachine guns, who line the catwalk joining a lonely gun tower on steel stilts in the water to a large three story building on the island proper.
Alvin Karpis
On the Rock
Like an arrowhead aimed at the Marin shore, its edge cutting the tides which rip through the Golden Gate, squats grim Alcatraz, Isle of Pelicans, girdled by warning buoys, remote, mysterious. From San Francisco it presents a solid, rather ugly picture in gray and brown, except for the dashes of color where ice plant clings to the rocky cliffs, for the faint pastel of the new staff apartments on the southwest side, or when smoke plumes from the incinerator or the great beam flashes from its lighthouse at night.
Frank A. Clarvoe
Most of the time the weather is fine and the ocean breezes give the air a tang and zip that is refreshing and invigorating. Then there are days when a filmy, wispy fog comes and goes around it like a gossamer veil, and nights when wet, cold fog envelopes it like a shroud....To the men confined there, it is not only the ultimate in isolation but the most ironic because they are there in the midst of the activity of a busy harbor with small craft darting to and from San Francisco, Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, Richmond, and Sausalito; within sound of the honking horns of a ceaseless procession of automobiles crossing the bridges; within sight of ocean lines as they glide through the Golden Gate to far away ports in the vast Pacific, and within sight and sound of air clippers and their buzzing motors, all reminding them that life is near but freedom far.
James A. Johnston
Alcatraz: Island Prison
Many people expressed surprise at the quite decent condition of the cellhouses. They expected some kind of dungeon, I guess. We all tend to stereotype prisons, and one of the biggest surprises was that the cellhouses themselves were so well lighted. We had large skylights about four and a half feet wide, which ran about 400 feet the length of the cell blocks. Everything was quite meticulously clean: the galleries were always inspected; the rails were wiped down; windows were spotless; and the floors always dusted and polished. In fact, old army surplus blankets were used to polish the floors and bring up the sheen even more, till you could see your own reflection.
Frank Heaney
Inside the Walls of Alcatraz
In the slate waters of San Francisco Bay, between the city and the Golden Gate, thirteen acres of gray rock thrust up like a clenched fist: the island of Alcatraz. Its prison buildings glint through the mist like stone knuckles under the eye of the sun.
Thomas E. Gaddis
The Birdman of Alcatraz
Alcatraz Island is 22 acres of solid rock and cliffs, surrounded by turbulent, fast moving, cold water...From the famous Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, it had often been called a brilliant jewel sitting in a field of green. This is easy to believe when seen at night from San Francisco. The lights from the island reflect off the waters of the bay and the lighthouse sends out flashes of light each minute, not unlike a diamond flashing its brilliance when exposed to the sun. Above the steep cliffs of the island are a multitude of brilliantly colored flowers and plants that seem to flourish in the damp, cold, windy, foggy atmosphere that often shrouds the island in a blanket of white.
Jim Quillin
Alcatraz from the Inside
Alcatraz reminds us of an Indian reservation because...it is isolated from modern facilities, the soil is rocky and unproductive, and the land does not support game.
Indians of All Tribes
The Proclamation to the Great White Father and All His People
I got on the McDowell, the speedboat, and we chugged away across the bay. I stayed down in the cabin until we were half way over. Then I got up on deck and took at last look at The Rock. It got dimmer and farther away, but not as quick as I would have liked. I knew there were nearly 300 men on it, but it still reminded me of a big squatty tombstone.
A.W. Davis
AZ-311