ALCATRAZ Full Tour & Incredible Escape Stories

[Music] all right as you can tell you can see the bridge we've made it alright I do believe we found it Alcatraz landing and another sign for it over here right here in the port of San Francisco here we are 135 there we go this is not the Love Boat so we're going out today to what they call the rock the most brutal prison there was it was for the hardest of the hardened criminals no one was ever known to have escaped alive native american ocular activities on alcatraz a renter that there's let's take a look at this we are officially on the island of Alcatraz it was about six years nobody was here on the island just a caretaker that closed in 1969 to 1971 there was a Native American occupation on this island actually the longest in federal history in US history testing against the price that Native Americans have faced in this country and also against some policies that were actually terminating reservation system well it's kind of crazy to think that what started out in 1909 as a military prison would eventually be turned in the mid 1930s into the worst of the worst prison by J Edgar Hoover he was convinced that there was a need for a place that could hold the worst of the worst and this was it with the freezing waters of the San Francisco Bay outside the island and the hardened steel jail bars that had been heat-treated to be ultra strong they believed that nobody could survive here this was not a place for rehabilitation this was 100% to break anyone that came some of the famous occupants here obviously Al Capone he was first imprisoned he had turned his jail cell into basically like a penthouse and to break him they sent him here and for 11 years he rotted away here also machine Machine Gun Kelly was here for 17 years and the Birdman of Alcatraz Robert Stroud there's one of the guard towers looking out over the water they recommend you work your way to the very top or the cell houses so we're gonna do that and as we take this tour I'll kind of tell you about some of the various ways people tried to escape or did make an attempt and then it was not successful now we're working our way back up the hill through all the old ruins so this destroyed building Tower right used to be kind of an officer's club for the families of people that worked here for the guards various times since it had been a military prison and a State Penitentiary it's used as both these were penitentiary apartments for people that lives here on site that worked here when the crazy thing is now this is technically a national park now they said for those who did try and make an attempt to escape through these waters it would take a very experienced swimmer about an hour to reach shore so an inexperienced swimmer in 40 to 50 degree waters not very likely you'll survive Holy Smoke there it is hell I saw some quotes from people that were in prison here saying you weren't even a name here you were a number and the worst part was they said you could look out and see land and none of those people knew you existed if you look up here on the water tower you can see some more of the commemorative occupying writing they put all that back up for the 50th anniversary of that this is how they would have brought you if you were a prisoner the end of freedom and see how much of it's falling apart alright we've made it to the main prison so where you picked up your audio guides this was the showering facility you can see the showers still in here [Music] shaving utensils [Music] so long privacy all right tour starts up the stairs look they even named the cellblocks Michigan Avenue block b1 look at a typical cell [Music] so first one the speaking of prison people are finding ways of bringing in like hacksaws and they were sawing through the bars so they got funding here to basically heat tree all the bars so that they were basically it brings the carbon out and makes them almost impenetrable so then people started figuring out ways one guy used a string dipped in wax and then he put like this scouring powder around it and then wrapped that around the bars and just saw at it for almost a year to break through those can you imagine this being your life I saw interviews with people saying the only entertainment they might have was maybe playing checkers in between the two jails at night they'd put like a get aboard right there play across I mean seriously take a look at how small that really is and these bars in particular were the ones they called the flat bars because they actually had flattened edges I mean it's big but it's really not that big not as big as you would think [Music] so this row of souls was called Broadway they said they would have originally brought you in they would have brought you in naked and walked down through here in front of all the other prisoners so here's a typical cell when you would first arrive then once they gave you your bedding it would look like this one of the crazy things they said was that every inmate would be given a pack of cigarettes every Monday Wednesday and Friday whether they smoked or not and obviously they would use these from our during the or smoking now you can see at the end of Broadway we have Times Square when the metal detector they would have ran people through to come in this is the dining hall you gotta imagine a lot of planning and scheming would have been done in here and take a look at the windows not much to look out at those old block windows you can't see anything and here's the kitchen area and the last menu and the audio guide said that each one of the knives that they had here in the kitchen would have been outlined in here so the guards could tell if one was missing and since everyone had silverware in here they said this could be a potentially dangerous time of the day fights could break out so you see that pipe up there in the corner that was for tear gas just in case anything should happen and that's the door that leads into the dining Wow let's go back into here this is the Information Center so here you can see a guard would have been working here if anybody had any questions one of the prisoners now this takes us out to the recreation yard where they would have played baseball and physical activity you can see it down there there's a photo of the old prison yard let's go out and look at the yard I thought it was kind of roped off but I guess it's not I guess you can't come down here yeah I feel like I walked right into Shawshank Redemption you can almost just feel people sitting in here when doc Barker of mah Barker's gang was in prison in here he organized an escape very well could have been planning stuff like that out here baseball fields down here let's go look at that like how many prisoners would have walked across these chunks of concrete and it really doesn't smell too awful nice here either you're second base home plates down there let's go take a look over here now we have the door open but you probably only got that little square to look out of head back in take a look at the famous cells that's how you'd open the jail doors let's go into the d-block now a d-block was the worst of the worst this was the treatment unit if you were just they called it prison within prison you can see their three tiers of cells here this is just one of the average cells for somebody sent here to D block and this was this was not the hole this one's even open take a look at this I saw an interview with one guy said if you enter the hole it was total darkness and all you got wear your boxer shorts and no bedding so you had to do calisthenics to stay warm yeah you almost want to look at these bars and see if anybody's tried to softer them or anything here you can see photos of some of the most famous people to stay here in the d-block Al Capone Machine Gun Kelly doc Barker Birdman of Alcatraz Mickey Cohen now it's crazies even though this was for the heart and criminals the d-block they gave them their most roomy and most state-of-the-art cells for some reason one of the one of the old guard said here if you see this it says this is the treatment unit reserved for the unusually dangerous men receive adequate food and care and will come fine to their cell for 24 hours a day now this chunk right here these are the isolation cells that's that's the hole so let's walk in one nothin nothing loved but at the time you would have had just a bathroom one prisoner said he used to take the button office overalls while he was in here and just throw up behind his head and then spent hours reaching around on the ground trying to find it that was his game to stay sane and inside this one's a little exhibit of people who were confined in the hole so the green doors behind me we're at the hole and the guard said they used to keep the lights off in here just for added psychological effect now we're going into the prison library and they said that was a true privilege so you're only guaranteed the necessities and see inside here so people had to really behave if they wanted a navy extra perks of going out to the REC yard or going to the library so the prisoners here came up with all kinds of interesting ways of trying to escape because that was all they had to think about so one of the things that they would do is uh one guy worked in the laundry and they used to do some of the military laundry here he over time slowly stole pieces of clothing and then one time when one of the military boats came he put all the clothing on pretended to be a soldier got on the boat and escaped however that boat was not going to San Francisco as one to another military an island that they have out here and so the guards and everybody figured now and when that boat docked they just apprehended the guy one of the escapes was somebody tried to go over a fence here and they the guards took shots and he basically jumped 75 feet to his death and then one of the most memorable is the one that nobody's ever really figured out the Great Escape where some men made a raft from glue and stitching together raincoats and their bodies were never found and they were never brought back but there was no trace of them on land and they never found anything in sea so and this is called CD Street because it's cellblock C and D so this is talking about one of the escape attempts and how they smuggled in a bar spreader gonna be right there to break out and they apprehended one of the guards and tried to kill him and when he was shot and hurt he scrawled their names on the cell wall other guys that did it so it says that one guard was killed in 16 injured so it would have been at this cell I actually have it set up to show how it was how it was done then up here's the gun gallery where a guard would walk with a gun up and down that catwalk and then right here as part of the gallery you'll see the keys are hanging they say that that was a device they configured so that the guard that was on the floor here could send his keys up just in case there was an instance where a prisoner tried to steal the keys so in that 1946 escape attempt the way that they got this going was that they distracted the guard up here while another prisoner down here was overpowering the guard down here so the leader this gang then scaled all the way up here with that bar spreader again and you see where that kind of bent part is right there that's where he spread the bars so when they started to call the guards and nobody answered eight of the guards came in here and were confronted by convicts with guns so then they put all the officers into individual cells and started shooting them through the bars and this is the officer who was killed in that 1946 breakout attempt now this section they said was known for being the Battle of Alcatraz during that time the Marines had to get involved to come stop the overtaking and they drop grenades from the ceiling you can see that hole up there and that's the damage done all that splatter that's pretty crazy and that's the hole in the ceiling so once they had dropped the grenades and they thought everything was calm actually thought that all the convicts that were uprising or dead they came in and all of them were actually huddled in this corridor with guns and that's how they ended up killing and we're shooting him inside here now we're going back down C D Street now this is the library we're across from here and they said that this cellblock was considered the nicest to stay in because he got the most Sun and here's a furnished cell block you can see with various items in paintings and all kinds of stuff in there as they said trying to make it home accepting it look at this one this one's got an accordion in there music lover since the prisoners had our tune getting cards they would play with dominoes instead and this is George heck's room was in here for kidnapping for 18 years and that's his painting kit in his room and then up here you can see the caricatures and various things he worked on so they said the 1950s they installed radios inside Alcatraz and the prisoners could put their headphones into these little boxes on the walls and listen to the radio now the prisoners here also used to get a musical hour so that's why you saw the accordion various people had harmonicas and Al Capone himself was the banjo player in the prison band and just to think if you were allowed to come outside of the bars and walk over to the window here this is all you'd be able to see here's visitation if you had a visitor you'd sit right here and look at him through there and look at this so across these jail doors when the Indian occupation happened they wrote people's names across the top they thought should be imprisoned for crimes and they said the only one that's legible anymore well you can see there that kind of says Nix and this one says Reagan all right now they said this is not an area the prisoners would normally go in this is where the people coming to work working in the jail would enter and this is the other side of the visitation then here's the administration building [Music] and that was the uniform red tie here's the warden's office said over the time of Alcatraz history they had four wardens here and here was the wardens view this is where guests would have entered now if we walk out the front doors where everyone would have entered you can see this was what's left of the wardens house so we'll take this back in is that we were a guest here visiting someone so here's the waiting room if you're coming to visit someone you check in here inside there and then if they let you go in you would go on in through here which is where we just came out of see there's visitation back into the jail so as we saw coming up those apartments many of the officers that worked here chose to live on the island but those who didn't could just hop on a boat and they said in 12 minutes they'd be back in San Francisco back on shore so when the Great Escape happened that I told you about 1963 where they never found the men or the bodies these were the cells of the men and the way that they did it was they created two faking dummies of themselves to be in the beds out of soap and various things around here so when the guard came to do his head check he saw them in bed this was their self this was one of their cells it's when the officer found the body laying in the bed he went to shake him and the head rolled off and he jumped back and then another officer down the hall said he found another fake head in the bed so they knew there was an escape and then the other two men ran these two cells right here with dummy heads there's an actual photo so the ways that the guys got out of their cells and escaped was you can see a hole right there much like in Shawshank Redemption they took their silverware and they made little holes over time behind their vents and eventually broke it in and they escaped through those then in this hell you can see he did the same thing now this is the jail cell right next to both of them and you can see what the little event look like before they started working on it in their neighbor neighbor cell so it's pretty small so think of that one night two guys were here just diligently digging their freedom out so if we leave their cell and go around the corner you see there's a utility room behind the jail cells that's where they ended up right here so I've been right here and they climbed up the pipes to the roof so think of that they steal silverware one night and over a year's time they're sitting there diligently poking holes and digging holes enlarging that grate for their freedom to get out crazy so from 9:30 at night onward it was lights out and also during this time the jail would have been segregated because of segregation at the time so this section of the jail was the blacks and Mexicans here they said so here they're commemorating the day that Alcatraz closed because Bobby Kennedy closed it down they said that the facility was falling apart from the weather and just where it's located as well as people were more into rehabilitation than just pure punishment and that's what alcatraz was here's the last prisoner leaving so I looked online and I found the number for the jail cell that Al Capone was in but they didn't have anything marked here clearly so when asked and they said that the very first block that we were on Michigan Avenue Chicago get it but this was a whole components so right here and they said that the reason it's open even though they don't let people go in there's just to let people know that was the cell and that they said on his birthday or like death day the hang of photo of him in front of a cell but they said they don't let people up there because you know the jails kind of falling apart and they said especially the third-level just it feels unsafe for people to be walking along there that's Al Capone's cell right there a little baseball inside there said he was a really tough guy here but the syphilis was starting to destroy his mind while he was here now that we've made it around most of the facility now we're looking for the Birdman cell and that was in cellblock D so we're back in cell block D and you noticed there's nobody around it's because I took the 1:30 tour and most people are done so I have the place pretty much to myself now to find the bird man go to cellblock D the third level and he used the last one down here it looks like it's number 29 and he didn't have the birds here he had those actually for like 30 years in Leavenworth and a warden there got tired of all that so that's why they sent him here he had no privileges here he killed in fact the reason they sent him here was because he killed one of the guards at Leavenworth now I also found out that Al Capone had a cell here on the C D block right above where the officers were put in there and shot and right where the recreation yard is Al Capone had a cell right here it's now titled number 501 but it was 433 when he had it you can see it has like a white card on there that says 433 so he had actually two cells here plus he was in d-block at one point so what a tour and if you're looking for a little souvenir having an inmate cup then I thought I had seen everything and I haven't from 1910 to 1963 this little building was the morgue well my friends I hope you enjoyed checking out Alcatraz let's go hop on the boat and head back [Music]

Channel: Daze with Jordan the Lion

Views: 447,924

Keywords: dailyvlogger, travel vlogger, urbex, golden age, hollywood, travel advice, old hollywood, history, tourism, cinema, filming locations, adventures, forgotten, travel, my trip, daze with jordan the lion, jordan the lion, daily vlog, vlog, vlogger, vlogging, lifestyle, scandals, film, los angeles, anthony bourdain, tourist, adam the woo, Alcatraz, the rock, Federal penitentiary, tour, AL capone, great escape, birdman of Alcatraz, San Francisco, what happened, machine gun Kelly

Id: X99eT4KJtVQ

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019