Rawlings, WY is the home of an historic Wyoming Territorial Prison.  The ACLU would have had a field day with this place.  It is cold hard stone and steel with no running water and negligible heat for the first 60 or so years and no hot water until three years before it closed.  A whipping pole served to encourage cooperation and dank dungeon cells were further persuasion for the incorrigible.

They housed as many as 500 inmates at a time. Wyoming was and is a death penalty state and they executed 14 men over the 80 years of use.  Of course stories of those inmates attract the most interest.  Execution was by hanging at first.  The gallows were of a true Rube Goldberg design.  The sentenced actually hanged themselves since their weight on the gallows trap door unlatched a lever that pulled a plug that drained a bucket that lowered a weight that pulled a rope that hinged the post that held the trapdoor shut from below.  The door opened the deed was done.  Then, progress; they went to the gas chamber.  We saw it and one can actually sit in the chair.  I didn’t!

The place is privately owned now and used for movie sets and Halloween Fright Nights. Displays are very low budget and without a guided tour it would be difficult to get much out of a visit.  I think it might be creepier than Alcatraz.  The smells make your skin crawl.  Anyway, it’s an interesting bit of history.