Yuma Territorial Prison

The Yuma Territorial Prison is a former prison located in Yuma, Arizona, United States. Opened on July 1, 1876, and shut down on September 15, 1909. It is one of the Yuma Crossing and Associated Sites on the National Register of Historic Places in the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area. The site is now operated as a historical museum by Arizona State Parks as Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park.

Prison
Opened while Arizona was still a U.S. territory, the prison 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 Arizona State Prison Complex located in Florence, Arizona. It was also the third historic park in Arizona. The state historic park also contains a graveyard where 104 of the prisoners are buried.

High school
Yuma Union High School occupied the buildings from 1910 to 1914. When the school's football team played against Phoenix and unexpectedly won, the Phoenix team called the Yuma team "criminals". Yuma High adopted the nickname with pride, sometimes shortened to the "Crims". The school's symbol is the face of a hardened criminal, and the student merchandise shop is called the Cell Block.

Notable inmates

 * Burt Alvord – Cochise County lawman and train robber
 * Bill Downing – Train robber
 * William J. Flake – Mormon pioneer imprisoned for violating the Edmunds Act
 * Pearl Hart – stagecoach robber
 * "Buckskin Frank" Leslie – gunfighter and killer of Billy Claiborne
 * Ricardo Flores Magón – Mexican revolutionary, founder of the Partido Liberal Mexicano
 * Pete Spence – outlaw involved in the Earp-Clanton feud

In popular culture
(Listed chronologically) The Yuma Territorial Prison has been featured in:
 * "Forty Lashes Less One", a 1972 western novel by Elmore Leonard about a planned prison break in 1909, the year the prison was closed.
 * "Three-Ten to Yuma", a 1953 western short story written by Elmore Leonard, and also in two film adaptations:
 * 3:10 to Yuma, the 1957 original (directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin), and the 2007 remake, also titled 3:10 to Yuma, directed by James Mangold and starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.
 * 26 Men, the 1957 episode "Incident at Yuma" of the syndicated western series of true stories of the Arizona Rangers, focuses on a prison break and the difficulty of gathering a posse faced by Captain Thomas H. Rynning, portrayed by Tristram Coffin.
 * "Hell Hole Prison" season 12, episode 8 of the Travel Channel show Ghost Adventures was shot at the prison. focusing its allegedly history of hauntings.
 * The prison was one of the two featured stories on the 71st episode of the podcast And That's Why We Drink.
 * Named one of the top haunted destinations in America by USA Today in October 2020.