Minnesota Now and Then: Stillwater state prison opened 170 years ago

CATHY WURZER: When you think of prisons names like Sing Sing, Alcatraz, Folsom, they're so famous-- or maybe infamous-- that most of us can conjure up an image of one of them in our minds, right, even if we've never been there. Minnesota's correctional facilities are far less infamous, but certainly, each one has a history.

Stillwater State Prison has a 170-year history. It was established by an act of the territorial legislature in February of 1851, accepting the first prisoners in 1853. Brent Peterson, Executive Director of the Washington County Historical Society is joining us right now with our segment Minnesota Now and Then.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, my goodness, Brent, welcome. Welcome to the program.

BRENT PETERSON: Well, thank you for having me, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Nice to hear your voice. Well, let's talk, folks here, about the territorial legislature passing this act in 1851 that allowed for the construction of a prison in Stillwater. What was the need for a prison back in 1851?

BRENT PETERSON: Well it actually it goes back to when Alexander Ramsey, as the first territorial governor, came to Minnesota and talked to that very first legislature. And what he said is that Minnesota needed a safe and secure lockup, and that was in 1849. So the legislature started getting on that, and they passed the bill, as you mentioned, in 1851.

And at that point, if there was a convict or criminal, the only place to house them would be at Fort Snelling.

CATHY WURZER: Ah, I did not know that, which would make some sense, of course, yeah.

BRENT PETERSON: Yes.

CATHY WURZER: What did the original Stillwater State Prison look like?

BRENT PETERSON: It wasn't very much. It was a three-story, stone building on the North end of town in a ravine. And actually, it had a wooden fence, if it had a fence at all, and it had room for six cells for six inmates. That was the original prison.

CATHY WURZER: And then, obviously they built upon it.

BRENT PETERSON: Yeah, they constantly were expanding it, making it larger and larger and larger. And eventually, the entire enclosure was about 9 and 1/2 to 10 acres and could hold up to about 500 to 550 convicts.

CATHY WURZER: So gosh, I was trying to think of when I last saw the original prison. It burned, did it not, actually, fairly recently in 2002?

BRENT PETERSON: Yeah, well, those were the last buildings of the original prison. The original prison was all stone. And after the prison closed and moved down to where it is today, down in Bayport, in 1914, the old prison sat. They tried to get some businesses in there, but that just didn't take.

So in the 1930s, as a National Youth Administration project, they tore down all the stone buildings. That's all the cell blocks and everything. And they used the limestone to line the Mississippi River to fight the erosion problem and just ended up with two brick buildings left.

CATHY WURZER: And those are the buildings that were burned to the ground by arson. Is that right?

BRENT PETERSON: That's right, yeah. Those are the last two.

CATHY WURZER: So who were some of the first inmates going back to 1853?

BRENT PETERSON: Well, 1853 is when the prison opened. The warden took office. That was Francis Delano. You might know the name Delano, as Delano, Minnesota is named for him. And that first year in 1853 there were no convicts. And in 1854, there were a couple.

And the first convict that came to the Stillwater prison was there for larceny, or theft, and he was sentenced to six months or so. But they really didn't have a system made out yet. And they only had part time guards. There were no guards at night. They locked the prison at night, and everybody went home.

The one story about the first convict was that they would actually let him out into the woods of the area to collect wood for the fireplaces, and so forth. And he didn't get back one night in time, and they actually locked the prison without him in it, and he went up to the warden's house to see if the warden was in, but the warden wasn't there.

So the first convict spent his night in the doorway of the prison. And in the morning, when the guards came back, they let him back in. And as this convict thought about it, he was quite upset because, when he was convicted in Minnesota, he was convicted and put in prison. And he was guaranteed three meals a day, and he missed dinner.

[LAUGHTER]

And he wrote a letter to the territorial governor at that time, and the governor agreed with him and reprimanded the warden for it.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, for goodness sakes.

BRENT PETERSON: It was quite interesting way how to start out the Stillwater prison. That's for sure.

CATHY WURZER: I would venture to guess, Brent, that some of the more famous inmates might have been Jesse James and the younger brothers?

BRENT PETERSON: Well, yeah, there were literally thousands of convicts that came through the main gate of the Stillwater prison in its 61 years of history. And three of the most notorious convicts, I would guess, or infamous, would be the three younger brothers, Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger.

And they rode in a gang with Frank and Jesse James. They tried to rob the bank down in Northfield, which was a colossal disaster.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah.

BRENT PETERSON: And the James brothers escaped, but the Younger brothers were captured. And they pled guilty to murder in the first degree and were sentenced to life in the Stillwater prison.

CATHY WURZER: And they died there, right?

BRENT PETERSON: Well, one did. The youngest Younger brother, Bob, he contracted tuberculosis, and he died at the prison in 1889. However, Jim and Cole both received parole. They were two of the first life prisoners in Minnesota to be paroled, and that was in 1901. And they tried to get a pardon soon afterwards from the governor but were denied.

Jim Younger, however, was a manic depressive. He had a fits of depression, and after they were denied, he committed suicide in Saint Paul. And that just left Cole. And Cole received a conditional pardon in 1903. And the conditions being that he never returned to the state of Minnesota and that he never exhibit himself in a fair or a show making--

CATHY WURZER: Money.

BRENT PETERSON: --money off of his notoriety.

CATHY WURZER: Sure, sure.

BRENT PETERSON: So what did he do in his late 50s? He went down back to Missouri. He wrote his autobiography. He started a circus with Frank James, called it the Frank James Cole Younger Wild West show. He hit the lecture circuit about how crime doesn't pay. He became a born again Christian.

CATHY WURZER: Oh.

BRENT PETERSON: He then appeared on Oprah and then Sally Jessy. I'm just kidding about that.

CATHY WURZER: I knew that. I knew that.

BRENT PETERSON: I just wanted to see if you or paying attention.

CATHY WURZER: I was paying attention.

BRENT PETERSON: OK, all right.

CATHY WURZER: So there are prisons across the country with a pretty sordid reputation, right? What has been Stillwater's reputation? What do the news accounts say about it?

BRENT PETERSON: Stillwater, it was a really dungey stone building originally. But it was not as bad as the other ones. There was a dungeon. You could be put in there. You could get bread and water if you had committed some sort of offense of the prison rules or whatever.

But it wasn't as bad as those other notorious ones. And actually, the last warden to work at the Stillwater prison was Henry Wolfer, and he was known as one of the best genealogists in the country at the time and he was more in reformation He wanted to reform the inmates instead of punishing them and he helped start quite a bit of what we would think are really progressive things in the prison, such as prison schools.

He expanded the library. He did a lot of different things. He actually helped design the prison that replaced the old Stillwater prison, which is now, of course, in Bayport. And the prison that he designed in Bayport is still being used today. So it must have been pretty good.

CATHY WURZER: Did he have a hand in the Stillwater Prison Mirror, the newspaper?

BRENT PETERSON: Warden Wolfer did not, but the Younger brothers did.

CATHY WURZER: That's right. They did, as a matter of fact. I do remember that. I'm running out of time here. So let me ask you about, is the warden's home still open for tours?

BRENT PETERSON: It is. That is the only building that is left standing that is from the territorial government of Minnesota. It was built and opened in 1853. It is now a museum, and we are open from May until the end of October. And we are now redoing the exhibits, so you'll see something new and different when we open in May 1, this coming season.

CATHY WURZER: Which would be then the 170th anniversary--

BRENT PETERSON: Of the house.

CATHY WURZER: --of the prison. Yeah, of the house too.

BRENT PETERSON: Absolutely.

CATHY WURZER: All right, Brent, it is always my pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.

BRENT PETERSON: Well, thank you, Cathy, for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Brent Peterson is the executive director of the Washington County Historical Society. It's online at wchsmn.org. This is our Minnesota Now and Then segment.