The Old Idaho Penitentiary is a surprisingly beautiful place to visit! It’s connected to and maintained by the Idaho Botanical Garden next door, and the grounds are absolutely overflowing with flowers, mostly roses. Not to mention the old buildings themselves are more attractive than what you would think for a prison. Even if what went on inside is more than a little creepy. (And looks it.) Let’s take a look around.
You can pay $2 for a guided tour of the Old Idaho Penitentiary, and/or walk around on your own. You are given a map when you enter, and there are plenty of signs and old photographs to transport you back to the prison’s past.
Old Idaho Penitentiary
When you first enter the Old Idaho Penitentiary, you do so through the administration building. While the Old Pen originally opened in 1870, this castle-like entrance building is from 1894. There’s a ticket & information counter straight ahead and the warden’s office directly to your right, with a cool antique safe built into the wall.
Across the hall is the gift shop. But more importantly, behind the gift shop is a room with seating and a video featuring stories from past inmates. Make sure to sit and listen for a bit either before or after your tour to make the prison come alive with first-hand accounts.
(It’s worth noting that there’s a 1955 addition to the outside of this section for a visitation room. Now it holds one of two bathrooms on site.)
To enter the penitentiary, pass through the massive gate, take a peek into the armory where guns for the guards were stored, and step out into the yard.
Outbuildings and Exhibits
If you walk into the yard straight ahead, there are rows of beautiful roses between the oldest buildings. But if you head to the left, there’s a whole rose garden. And it wasn’t installed recently! The inmates cultivated roses as part of their rehabilitation.
Continuing along the left side, it almost looks like the storefronts and ruins of a wild west town. Which, of course, Idaho was the Wild West when the penitentiary first opened. There are the remains of the dining hall, open to see the basement rooms underneath. (And a forbidding cellar door to the “dungeon” punishment rooms underground.)
Along here are what used to be the hospital and barber shop, plus a smaller dorm for more “trusty” inmates. Now these rooms house exhibits on the history, inmates, and guards of the Old Idaho Penitentiary. And these aren’t boring facts, either. One timeline of all the riots is presented half in comic-book form. A whole room of inmate intake photos shows how racially diverse the prison population was, and the kinds of strange things they were charged with, especially in the oldest days. Information boards about the prison guards show similar facts- where they were from and how they came here. (Note the one German guard brought up in the Hitler Youth.)
Around the back corner of the yard is what started in 1923 as “The Cooler” and in 1926 as “Siberia” – the solitary confinement cells. The entrance and solid cell doors face the back wall, making you feel miles away from the other buildings, even in a relatively small footprint.
Dennis the Cat & Exhibits
Along the back wall is a second gate that originally led to the outer penitentiary yard, what is now the Idaho Botanical Garden. You can’t exit this way now, but prisoners would use this gate to access the farm and ball fields beyond the walls, plus the prison cemetery is way out on the edge of the property.
At the small gatehouse is a sign telling how inmates smuggled a cat through this gate. If you walk behind the large building to the right as you face the gate, you can find the 1968 grave of Dennis the cat, who “served” 16 years at the Pen and was buried with honors. Now, there’s a “Dennis the Cat Day” with food trucks, special merchandise, and pet food donations for the local cage-free cat shelter.
The large building along the back was (at different times) a shirt factory and a “loafing” room. Now, it houses an event space and some larger artifacts. On one side is a boxcar from the 1949 “Merci” train – a thank-you gift of homemade goods from the French people after WWII. On the other is a “Gospel Coach” from 1932 that served as a pre-RV traveling home for a family who preached the gospel at hospitals and penitentiaries like this one.
Farther along is the huge, industrial laundry facility and the second bathroom on site. Next to that is the J.C. Earl Weapons Exhibit, a frankly impressive war museum inside the penitentiary museum. To view the weapons in a mostly chronological fashion, start from the left with the swords, work your way past a recreated WWI trench, and around to the Vietnam-era machine guns and heavy artillery.
Cell Blocks
Heading back towards the front are six cell blocks, four of which you can tour. The oldest, a 1870 “Territorial Prison” (since Idaho wasn’t a state yet) stands in ruins. And the 1890 “New” Cell House with a mansard roof stands closed. You can tour the 1911 “2 House” and the 1928 “3 House” and they are as creepy as a century-old cell block can be. The oldest has these flat-grate bars and a corner cut off for the overnight “honey pot.”. (And yes, escape attempts were attempted that way.) The newer ones have the more typical round bars and proper toilets.
To the right of the entrance is the larger 1952 4 House. All of these cell blocks are furnished, in a way. Either left the way they were abandoned, or somewhat staged to look like they did when they were occupied. It’s interesting to note the individuality of the cells. The inmates were apparently allowed to decorate with paint and whatever they could make on-site. (Though everything has decayed and is peeling now and looks super creepy.) You can walk along the rows of cells in each block, and even up to the second story, though passages are narrow. One of the creepiest features in all of these cell blocks, is that the rows of cells are stacked up four levels high. It’s almost like putting men in storage, piled on top of one another.
The 1954 5 House to the far right was the maximum security facility and is only two levels high. But that’s the building that also houses a short death row, just adjacent to the gallows room. Ten men were executed here by hanging, via a trap door in the floor.
Across the cement basketball court, you can peek into the 1931 sally port, a gated vehicle entrance to the penitentiary’s inner yard.
Outside the Walls
Heading back out of the main entrance, don’t forget to look into the fun & quirky gift shop and stop to listen to inmates tell their own stories in the room behind, if you didn’t earlier.
Across from the main entrance is the separately-walled-off Women’s Ward. Women at the Old Idaho Penitentiary had a much less regimented life behind bars than the men. The few women who ended up here lived in small rooms surrounding a larger common room, in which they spent most of their days in idleness or on common household chores. Along the walls are photos and stories of some of the women housed here. Most of the stories are lighthearted, about young ladies with too much free time on their hands. One pair outright escaped as a prank, and waited patiently at home for the prison guards to come pick them back up.
The rest of the area just outside the walls is like a sweet little neighborhood. There’s an apartment-style building for the guards to live in, a beautiful turreted Bishop’s House (which you can now rent for special occasions), and a warden’s house. I don’t think you can tour any of these, but it makes for an oddly idyllic street right outside of the prison walls.
To the left of the entrance is a small, free museum of Idaho geology. It’s not the most exciting place, but if you’re into rocks, you’d probably find it pretty cool.
Hours & Admission
The Old Idaho Penitentiary is open every day from noon until 5 pm, with last entry at 4:00. In the summer – from Memorial Day to Labor Day – it’s open from 10 am until 5 pm.
Admission to the Old Idaho Penitentiary costs $8. Guided tours are an additional $2, making for an even $10, if you’re counting. You can bundle the Old Pen with the Idaho Botanical Garden next door for $15, which is an overall savings of $5.
The have special events during the year. Dennis the Cat Day (see above) is one, but they open the prison in the evenings around Halloween for ghost stories, haunted tours (cell block 4 is haunted, apparently), plus food trucks and alcohol. It sounds seriously spooky to me!
Parking
Just a note about parking – there is a small amount of parking right across from the main entrance to the Penitentiary and some parallel parking along the street. There’s a bigger lot behind the warden’s house at the head of the popular Table Rock trailhead, which winds up into the hills behind the prison. There’s another large lot in front of the Botanical Gardens.
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