Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Syd Whittle
Taken: July 6, 2009
Caption: Original Genoa Jail
Additional Description: Here in the jail area visitors can see the original cells used from 1865 until 1916. The stove was used after the turn of the century to heat the jail room. The steel privy in the corner was used by prisoners as they contemplated a “cleaner life”. The ball & chains, each 20 inches in circumference and weighing 33 pounds, were used in the 1880s as prisoners were allowed out of their cells for exercise.

The jail was not always divided up the way it is now. Prisoners were taken out of their cells to “exercise” in the open room that is now divided into separate exhibit spaces.

Before the courthouse was restored and converted into a museum, there was a hole in the ceiling above the left-handed cell.

A prisoner had climbed up on top of the cell, when he was let out for exercise, and tried cutting an escape hole in the ceiling.

The unlucky prisoner discovered a half-inch thick steel plate above the dummy ceiling which separated the jail from the courtroom above.
Submitted: July 12, 2009, by Syd Whittle of Mesa, Arizona.
Database Locator Identification Number: p70491
File Size: 2.494 Megabytes

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