History of the State Penitentiary

I just finished reading Dick Kreck’s newest book, Anton Woode: The Boy Murderer, which tells the true story of an 11-year-old boy convicted of murder in 1892 and sentenced as an adult to the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City. While we don’t have the book in our library, we have many materials here on the history of the famous prison. These include the Biennial Reports of the Warden of the Colorado State Penitentiary, which were referenced frequently throughout the book. Also in our collection is a 1955 souvenir booklet, This is the Prison. We also have quite a bit of recent statistical information.

The Colorado State Archives has a history of the prison, many digitized records and photos, and even an index of the names and prison numbers of every inmate from 1871 to 1973 on their Penitentiary Records webpage.