Yuma Territorial Prison

The Yuma Territorial Prison was a prison in the Arizona Territory in the United States. It accepted its first inmate on July 1, 1876. For the next 33 years 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, served sentences there for crimes ranging from murder to polygamy. The prison was under continuous construction with labor provided by the prisoners. In 1909, the last prisoner left the Territorial Prison for the newly constructed prison located in Florence, Arizona. It is now operated as an historical museum by Arizona State Parks as Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park, a state park of Arizona.

From 1910 to 1914 the Yuma Union High School occupied the buildings. When the school's football team played a game against Phoenix, with Phoenix favored to win, the Phoenix team branded the Yuma team "criminals" when Yuma unexpectedly won; the school adopted the mascot with pride, sometimes shortened as the "Crims"; the school mascot image is the face of a hardened criminal, and the student merchandise shop is known as the Cell Block.

Yuma Territorial Prison in popular culture

The Yuma Territorial Prison figured in "Three-Ten to Yuma", a 1953 Western short story written by Elmore Leonard, and also in two film adaptations: the 1957 original ' (directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin), and the 2007 remake, also entitled ' (directed by James Mangold and starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale). In the 1969 film "The Wild Bunch", Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker) threatens Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan): "You've got thirty days to get Pike, or thirty days back to Yuma." In the 1961 western, "The Comancheros", starring John Wayne, Yuma is also referenced. Yuma prison is referenced frequently in western radio and television shows such as Gunsmoke and Bonanza, where ex-cons were frequently described as having done time.Fact|date=September 2008

External links

* [http://azstateparks.com/Parks/YUTE/index.html Arizona State Parks: Yuma Territorial Prison]
* [http://www.azcorrections.gov/history.html Early History] of Arizona Department of Corrections (includes history of Yuma Territorial Prison)