IN 1910 THE BOOMING copper mining town of Globe, Arizona, built a new territorial jail to house its miscreants.
It was built next to the courthouse. Convicts went directly from the courtroom to the prison on the “bridge of sighs.”
The building’s walls were solid concrete, and the cell blocks came from the famous Yuma prison, which had closed the year before.
The cell blocks were a prison within a prison – steel walls and a steel ceiling.
Each cell block held twenty-eight men. Some served sentences as long as ten years here.
Four men shared a space not much bigger than six by six feet.
The jail walls still bear graffiti that prisoners scratched into the steel, perhaps with their belt buckles.
The jail was built on the site where Globe’s gallows used to stand. They say it’s haunted, and I believe it.
For current information on visiting Globe’s 1910 Territorial Jail, call the Globe-Miami Chamber of Commerce at (928) 425-4495 during regular business hours.
Originally posted at magnificentpassage.com.