| In the late twentieth century the prison system and cultural tourism were two of the fastest growing sectors of the United States economy. While at first seemingly disparate, these two trends do intersect: the proliferation of new prisons in the last quarter of the twentieth century has left several abandoned, outdated prisons dotting the landscape, and thirty percent of these have been preserved for the purpose of education and tourism. This dissertation is an examination of how these two practices, incarceration and tourism, merge in the United States. Largely, it draws on new, self-reflexive, politically critical, museum studies methods. This methodology is combined with more traditional cultural history sources, as well as first-person participation based on an ethnographic model.; This study includes the life histories of seven historic prisons in the United States: Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Burlington County Prison in New Jersey, the Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins, the Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie, the Old Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, and the Old Idaho State Pen in Boise. These prisons embody the ideological shifts in penology over two centuries, and continue to reveal the ways in which American prisons are imagined in popular thought. They also act as case studies to illustrate changing practices in public history and preservation from the mid-1960s into the 2000s.; This dissertation reveals that historic prisons in the American West are shaped by the urbanity and economic diversification of their surrounding communities, as well as their proximity to universities and other forms of tourism. The interpreters of these sites rely upon the myths of the lawless West to attract tourists. Historic prisons in the more densely populated mid-Atlantic, however, are able to draw from a vast history of benevolent action on the part of Quaker penal reformers to save and interpret their antiquated prisons. Alcatraz is in its own category as an anomaly of the American prison system as well as an extraordinary historic site. |
