Like many Indian reservations, Alcatraz had no modern facilities or fertile soil. The federal prison had closed six years earlier, and the island had been designated “surplus government property.” ...

The federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, the "Rock," was deliberately infamous. It was here that the worst cases in the entire federal prison system were sent. The threat of ...

Here's a look at some of the most famous criminals to get locked up in the island-based prison off the coast of San Francisco. Pictured here in the 1970s, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary and the ...

Scientist Pete Kelsey and his team have 3D-mapped the entire island of Alcatraz, discovering Civil War secrets, prisoner ...

“The ongoing U.S. Marshals investigation of the 1962 escape from Alcatraz federal prison serves as a warning to fugitives,” the agency said in a statement. “That regardless of time, we will continue ...

The federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island, located off the coast of San Francisco, CA, opened in 1934. Until it closed nearly three decades later, Alcatraz was reserved for some of the most ruthless ...

Built over a desolated island on the coast of San Francisco, the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary made history as the darkest pit you could hide prisoners from 1934 to 1963. The imposing fortress ...

Although best known for its 29 years as a federal penitentiary, the island of Alcatraz was also a military fort, used by the army during the Civil War to protect San Francisco from Confederate ...