Although Alcatraz Cruises’ tours often sell out during the year, it is a priority to educate the community about the robust history of the Island. As a result, Alcatraz Cruises wants to encourage local residents to experience the assets that make Alcatraz Island one of the country’s most visited national parks.
アルカトラズの歴史
"彼らは何と言おうとも、少しはノスタルジーを感じていると思うんです。この場所が恋しくなるのだろう"- 1963年に最後の受刑者を送り出したときのアルカトラズ所長フレッド・T・ウィリアムソン
Few islands in the world can boast such a glorious natural setting – and grim human past – as Alcatraz. Visited by Native Americans as early as 10,000 years ago, the barren island remained uninhabited until Europeans arrived. Spanish and Mexican settlers in the early 1800s called the guano-covered island “Isla de los Alcatraces” – Island of Pelicans.
1848年に島がメキシコから買収されて間もなく、南北戦争（1861年～1865年）の間、アメリカ軍はミシシッピ川以西で最大の防衛要塞となるものを建設しました。また、1854年に西海岸初の灯台が稼働してからは、ゴールデンゲートの危険な海域に入る船の目印となった。
Alcatraz began its long era as a dreaded place of confinement when soldier convicts were first imprisoned at the fort in 1860. Over the next decades, the island became less of a defense fort and more of a military prison, with Army convicts building most of the structures still standing on Alcatraz today.
Alcatraz was reborn as a civilian Federal Penitentiary in 1934, becoming known in the press as “The Rock” and “America’s Devil’s Island.” Wardens at Atlanta, Leavenworth, and other federal prisons selected their most unruly convicts to transfer there, among them Al Capone and “Machine Gun” Kelly. No less tough and carefully selected were the correctional officers, one for every three prisoners, who were trained to use their wits as well as their muscles when trouble broke out.
Alcatraz was the most escape-proof prison in the nation. Even if a convict could get past the remote-control locks, guard towers, and barbed wire, he had to struggle against swirling tides and icy waters to reach shore. Yet, escape was uppermost on the minds of many inmates. “Alcatraz is becoming a prison of madmen and men half mad,” Al “The Bug” Loomis, a bank robber once incarcerated there, wrote in 1938. “The sustaining hope is escape.”
長い間、脱走者は粗末な水中翼や木製の足ひれを作って泳ごうとしたが、溺れたり泳いでいるうちに捕えられたりした。1962年、ジョン・ポール・スコットは、サンフランシスコの海岸にたどり着いた最初で唯一の脱獄者となった。彼はフォート・ポイントの岩の上で意識を失い、靴下だけを履いて紫色に震えているところを発見されました。衰弱しきった彼は、結局、元の場所に戻ってきた。
In that same year, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy announced the phase-out of the prison. Alcatraz was turned over to the General Services Administration as surplus property and most of the inmates were transferred to a new facility in Marion, Ill. Over the next few years, hundreds of proposals were submitted for new uses for the island, including a West Coast version of the Statue of Liberty, a casino resort, and space museum.
In 1969, a group of 300 Native Americans began a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz, claiming rights to the island under an old Sioux Treaty that gave Native Americans the right to homestead unused federal lands. While the Occupation put a media spotlight on Native American issues, the numbers of activists gradually dwindled and Federal marshals removed the last few from the island in June 1971. Each November Native Americans of many tribes return to Alcatraz to hold a sunrise ceremony commemorating the Occupation.
1972年、アルカトラズは国立公園局のゴールデンゲート・レクリエーション・エリアの一部として新たに指定された。翌年にはアルカトラズ島へのツアーが始まり、今では年間約170万人が、かつて多くの男たちが二度と見るまいと夢見たこの場所を訪れている。
