Planting life on "the Rock"
Alcatraz Island, the top of an ancient hill peaking out of the San Francisco Bay, is located just a mile and a half off the Embarcadero. The legendary island houses the remains of a once formidable federal penitentiary—from which only three inmates, working together, may have successfully escaped. Evidence of their survival remains inconclusive to this day: a raft found on Angel Island, footprints leading away, unconfirmed sightings of the fugitives, postcards in the men’s handwriting. The infamous breakout was in June 1962; the next year the prison closed down after 30 years in operation.
Anyone who imagines this might not have been such an agonizing incarceration need only pay a visit to Alcatraz and walk through some of the abandoned facilities—the main cellblock, the dining hall, the library, the hospital, the morgue—to sense the hopeless and isolating effect of the relentless fog, wind, and siren song of the city itself, so torturously close.
Info
Address Alcatraz, San Francisco, CA, 94123, www.alcatrazgardens.org | Public Transport Ferry leaves from Pier 33 on the Embarcadero; tickets are $30 | Hours 9am to the evening| Tip Dress in layers and wear comfortable shoes. You’ll have to walk a good distance around the island and it gets cold and windy.
Beginning in 1861, when the government officially started using the existing military fortification on Alcatraz as a military prison, an effort was made to improve the island’s aesthetic. In 1865, Victorian-style gardens began to bloom, and in the 1920s, prisoners planted hundreds of trees and shrubs, along with terraces and a rose garden.
Among those who contributed to the gardens was a counterfeiter named Elliott Michener who had tried unsuccessfully to escape from Leavenworth State Prison in 1941 and was subsequently sent to Alcatraz. He quickly won the trust of the guards after returning a dropped key. For nine years he took charge of the gardens and, in addition to ordering bulbs and seeds, built a greenhouse and toolshed. “If we are all our own jailers, and prisoners of our traits,” he once wrote, “then I am grateful for my introduction to the spade and trowel, the seed and the spray can. They have given me a lasting interest in creativity.”
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