![]() The guardhouse repairs were especially challenging because the work had to be performed alongside the island's daily visitors, who traveled through the actual construction site. The boathouse, added in the 1920s, was removed so that visitors could see and pass through the original sally port entrance constructed in 1857.Īny construction projects on Alcatraz are complicated because supplies and water must be ferried to the island. The National Park Service completed major repairs to the guardhouse, with special attention paid to improving the structure's ability to withstand earthquakes. Their hardship was downplayed by newspapers and their captors, who referred to their forced removal as "rude." Two of the men's wives gave birth to children who died while the men were imprisoned. During the day, they were made to cut large logs into smaller sections. They were taken from their homes and kept in the army prison on Alcatraz for a year before their release in September 1895.īesides being forcibly removed from their homes and families for the 'crime' of defending their culture, the Hopi prisoners lived in dangerous, unsanitary conditions on Alcatraz. The Hopi men were part of a group who refused to send their children to government boarding schools and other disputes with US authorities. In 1894, 19 Hopi men were arrested by federal troops in Arizona as part of a US policy of using incarceration to intimidate Native Americans who resisted assimilation. The guardhouse featured a sally port, an armored, controlled entryway to the fortress on Alcatraz beyond. That facility was used to house unruly soldiers and during the Civil War, Confederate spies. The guardhouse was built in 1857, and contained the island's first prison, a US military stockade in the building's basement. Penitentiaries often have double fences/gates at their service entrance that can handle an 18-wheeler (or a prisoner bus).During the 1860s, Alcatraz was the most fortified military site on the West Coast with over 100 cannons facing the bay in case of would-be intruders. They can be sized for foot traffic or for anything up to big trucks. ![]() The term has come to mean the double set of doors with a vestibule between them, usually for temperature control (the "airlock" effect at most malls) or security (as in at the jail). The modern "proper" usage would be the auto shop that has one or more overhead doors, and then a 36" door for foot traffic, just so you don't have to open an overhead for a pedestrian, but no one in that business calls them sally ports. They're really referring to the bit with the double portcullis (just normal doors today) - the "murder hole" area, although the original term is for the smaller door in a larger door. Most modern jails have normal doors for pedestrian traffic to the admin side (the front door), but bring prisoners through the back way - the sally port. THEN they dropped the outer and used the holes while you were trapped. If they didn't like you, they left the outer portcullis up, but closed the inner, then invited you in. It was common in some designs to put a room above this space, with holes (called "murder holes" in the floor. The term can also refer to the "space" between the outer portcullis and an inner one. The "sally port" is a smaller (walk through size) door set into the portcullis to allow a single person or small group to go in or out of the castle, without having to raise the portcullis, thus exposing the interior to the "other" side's attack (a charge by mounted nights across the drawbridge is why all this exists in the first place. The portcullis could be "dropped" in a hurry by cutting the ropes or tripping the catch on the winches, and believe me, you don't want to be under it! But getting it back up was another deal entirely. The portcullis (gate) is necessary because you can't get in our out without lowering the drawbridge, which in effect "opens" the front door. In the "traditional" medieval castle, there was a moat, with drawbridge, and then a portcullis behind that.
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