Up the to The

UP THE TO THE

RIVER and WOODS

BY CLARENCE JEFFERSON HALL JR.

The Adirondack he Clinton Correctional facing New York at that penal reform experiment Facility, located in time was overcrowding in designed to rehabilitate wilderness can be the community of Greenwich Village’s Newgate, through hard work and strict Dannemora, is situated the only state prison. Accord- discipline, including enforced treacherous and in the dense and ing to David Lewis, historian silence. Opened along the Tunforgiving wilderness of the of New York’s prison system, Hudson River in 1826, inmates unforgiving— Adirondack Mountains. The the post-Revolutionary surge at Sing Sing spent their days history of Clinton Correctional of migrants to upstate New working in nearby marble especially for a Facility over the past two cen- York, spurred on by abundant mines, providing stone for turies highlights the complex land and construction of New York’s notable structures. long line of prison relationships forged among the Erie Canal, inspired state Despite the development of the region’s penitentiaries, officials to build new prisons additional prison facilities, escapees. communities, and the sur- to relieve overcrowding and new prisons quickly filled, rounding natural environment spark further development in prompting state leaders to since before the Civil War. more remote and underpopu- search for more cell space. lated areas. From the outset, Up the River the correctional system oper- Clean Mountain Air Prison construction in the ated to satisfy both carceral The New York Natural History state’s rural areas began in and commercial objectives. Survey (conducted from 1836 the early nineteenth century. The first prisoners arrived at to 1840) recommended using One of the biggest problems Auburn, the state’s second inmate labor on infrastructure prison, in 1818 as part of a and public works projects in the isolated Adirondacks. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARYOF

Lyon Mountain was one of many towns in the North Country to host a prison.

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Peter James, an inmate working in the

prison itself. Clinton’s growing prison cellar, spent inmate population compelled the adoption of stricter security four years digging a measures through the nine- twenty-foot-long teenth and early twentieth centuries, including construc- tunnel connected to tion of a dungeon, massive NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES NEW YORK STATE perimeter wall, razor wire Clinton’s sewer Auburn, opened in 1818 and pictured here in the late nineteenth century, fences, and gun towers. Still, system. In 1903, James was the state’s second prison. prisoners sent to Dannemora made many attempts to flee. and three counter- Though iron ore mining was challenging the moment two One prisoner dressed in one of the North Country’s inmates hurled themselves civilian clothes simply walked parts escaped through largest and most profitable over Clinton’s stockade fence. out the front gate in 1860. the tunnel, only to industries by the early 1840s, The pair ran toward Canada, He was found later living in numerous deposits of the trudging through dense Philadelphia. be captured less than precious rock remained forests to the top of a nearby Peter James, an inmate untapped. To relieve over- mountain. Unsure of where working in the prison cellar, a week later near crowding at Auburn and Sing to go, they traversed the spent four years digging a the Canadian border. Sing, state leaders proposed woods until nightfall, when twenty-foot-long tunnel construction of a new prison they spotted the prison only connected to Clinton’s sewer adjacent to recently discovered 800 feet away. system. In 1903, James and mines in western Clinton After spending the night three counterparts escaped Tracking escaped prisoners through the Adirondack wilderness proved County. The goal of the mining in a swamp, the next morning through the tunnel, only to to be a difficult task. was to keep the penitentiary the men moved east on the be captured less than a week financially solvent and spur road to Plattsburgh. They later near the Canadian border. increased business activity. In stumbled upon the cabin of Bernard Welch fled over a sharp break with past a widow who took them in, one of Clinton’s twenty-foot- practice, lawmakers dedicated fixed lunch, and offered the high security fences in 1974 Clinton State Prison to a fugitives a place to rest. and lived a comfortable double program of rehabilitation After their nap, the escapees life in Virginia. Captured in through work and education, resumed their journey and 1980 after committing a guided by humanitarian ideals. encountered a search party of murder, he then went on to Prison Association of New men carrying “guns and sticks.” escape from an Illinois prison York reformers hoped exposure A searcher’s rock quickly inca- a few years later. to the Adirondacks’ clean pacitated one fugitive, while Escapes were not confined mountain air would aid in his counterpart fled into the to inmates at Clinton, as new restoring inmates’ physical, forest. The remaining runaway state and federal prisons were mental, and spiritual health. surrendered the next morning. opened beginning in the Unfortunately, not every Perhaps realizing the suffering mid-1970s. The rationales for prisoner transported to the men had endured in the the quarter century of prison Dannemora was enamored of swampy, bug-infested wilder- expansion that followed the North Country’s invigora- ness, the warden doled out a paralleled those given prior to ting climate. Within two weeks suspended sentence, only to construction of Auburn, Sing of its June 1845 opening, be imposed in the event of Sing, and Clinton. By 1973 Clinton experienced its first future misbehavior. New York’s inmate population escape. The restorative The Adirondacks, though, swelled beyond capacity, lead- environment described by the were not always an intractable ing to a crisis state officials

Prison Association proved barrier to escape, nor was the believed could be solved by ARCHIVES NEW YORK STATE

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Below: To relieve overcrowding at Auburn and Sing Sing, state leaders proposed construction of a new prison adjacent to recently discovered mines in western Clinton County. Bottom: A shuttered state tuberculosis hospital LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF LIBRARY in Ray Brook, Essex County, was converted to a minimum-security prison in 1976.

Order was carved out of the wilderness in the Clinton Prison mess hall, ca. 1910.

adding new cells. Once pro- and seasonal visitors claimed posals to build penitentiaries the Adirondacks as a rustic in the New York City area retreat. Added to this were encountered resistance from land use regulations dating to suburbanites, corrections offi- the late nineteenth century, cials looked north to including the Forest Preserve Adirondack communities. State Act of 1885; Adirondack Park planners hoped the promise Act of 1892; Article XIV of of secure jobs in a region the State Constitution, pro- notorious for high unemploy- tecting lands within the Forest ment, poverty, and a dimin- Preserve as “Forever Wild;”

NEWYORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ishing population would blunt and the creation of the the impact of any potential Adirondack Park Agency in opposition. They were wrong. 1973. Unlike 1845, it seemed prisons would not easily be A New Adirondack Era placed inside New York’s Life in the Adirondacks under- largest state park. went a transformation in the Then Governor Hugh 130 years following construc- Carey took over a shuttered tion of Clinton Prison. While state tuberculosis hospital in the community of Dannemora Ray Brook, Essex County, grew up around the peniten- converting it to a minimum- tiary after its creation in 1845, security prison in August other places targeted for cor- 1976. The federal Bureau of rectional expansion had their Prisons followed suit, crafting own character and economic a plan with the Lake Placid base. Though many permanent Olympic organizers to build a residents struggled to find new facility on protected work in the declining mining, Forest Preserve land, first to logging, and tourism house Winter Olympic athletes trades, large numbers in 1980, and later to reopen of affluent second as a federal medium security homeowners prison. State corrections

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THE ARCHIVES C O N N E C T I O N

employed a wide range of primary source materials, Iincluding: the STOP the Olympic Prison collection, 1980 Winter Olympics Oral History, and Representative Robert McEwen’s papers at the Special Collections Department and Archives of St. Lawrence University in Canton; Representative NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES NEW YORK STATE David O’Brien Martin’s papers at the Special Collections Materials confiscated after an escape attempt at Clinton Prison in 1950. Department of SUNY Potsdam; state records and correspondence related to prison construction projects at Ray Brook, officials in 1981 again sought Clinton’s history with escapes, Gabriels, Lyon Mountain, and Tupper Lake at the Adirondack new cell space by attempting prison planners seem to have Park Agency Records Office in Ray Brook; documents related to purchase a 227-acre satel- generally downplayed poten- to prison labor on outdoor conservation projects at the lite campus of Paul Smith’s tial breakouts, citing New Department of Environmental Conservation in Ray Brook; College in Gabriels, Franklin York’s low number of escapes microfilm of Dannemora town board minutes at the New County, for a minimum- and quick recapture times. In York State Archives in Albany; local newspapers and periodi- security prison. Citing emer- fact, Corrections Department cals stored on the website of the Northern New York Library gency overcrowding condi- reports and correspondence Network; and the Prison Association of New York’s annual tions, New York’s Corrections with the Adirondack Park reports and records at the New York Public Library. Department purchased and Agency don’t indicate that the began moving inmates into long history of escapes from an abandoned school in the Dannemora was a matter Ray Brook inmate. His wife driver left them stranded at Clinton County hamlet of discussed very much by the had driven from Long Island, an Indian Lake cemetery just Lyon Mountain in 1983, with two agencies, a fact raised picked him up off a work after their 1980s escape. environmental impact reviews repeatedly by critics in hearing detail on Dewey Mountain, Barrington Stephens, a happening after the prison rooms, letters, and interviews. and dropped him at a motel convicted murderer at Ray had opened. in Delaware. Brook’s federal prison, escaped In each of these cases, Getting Away Many fugitives followed the in September 1982, at the correctional planners encoun- Residents and tourists, though, example of Clinton’s first beginning of hunting season tered resistance from residents, were quite fearful. Much like runaways and tried to blend in the North Country. Sporting second homeowners and Clinton in 1845, escapes from in with a forbidding environ- hunting gear stolen from a tourists. Opposition in Ray the area’s newest prisons soon ment. One disoriented Gabriels resident’s car, he was spotted Brook prevented construction became a frequent occurrence. runaway hid under leaves and by a local couple driving near of a sewage facility at the The first fugitive from the brush, on the prison grounds, Lake Placid one October federal prison, along with a state prison in Ray Brook ran until hunger forced him back morning. State police quickly planned second federal off six weeks after the facility inside. A duo from Ray Brook’s apprehended Stephens, the penitentiary. In Gabriels, locals opened in September 1976, state prison used stolen first fugitive from the region’s forced prison officials to hiding in a nearby hunting camping equipment to blend federal penitentiary. In 2009, place most of the Paul Smith’s camp. Three months following in as backpackers, only to be an off-duty corrections officer property in the state Forest the opening of the prison at caught by teenagers who spotted an escapee from Preserve, which shielded the Gabriels in 1982, a pair of suspected something when the the Lyon Mountain prison facility from public view. inmates tried to buy beer from fugitives, posing as conserva- hiding in a local forest and Though circumstances a local grocery. The night of a tionists, sought to purchase apprehended him. differed in each of the public hearing on the Gabriels cigarettes and liquor from the The Adirondacks, once

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF LIBRARY Adirondacks’ prison towns, prison project in July 1981, young people. Three more viewed by reformers and the issue of escapes figured attendees had to pass through inmates from the Ray Brook corrections officials as a vital prominently in the planning police checkpoints and road- federal prison learned getaway partner for rehabilitation, and debates surrounding pro- blocks set up during the drivers were not always reliable became, to many inmates, an posed penitentiaries. Despite search for Dennis Klapthor, a after an argument with their unforgiving enemy. n