The territory of Montana, created in 1864, had no prison during the Civil War and gold rush days. Federal prisoners, convicted of violating the laws of Congress, were sent under contract to the Nebraska State Penitentiary. Those convicted of violating territorial laws were incarcerated in county jails, primarily in Madison County. A rudimentary federal prison existed for a short time in Virginia City, but it was not adequate for the demands of the territory.
Territorial Governor James M. Ashley demanded a properly equipped penitentiary, and on January 22, 1867, Congress appropriated “no more than $40,000” to erect a prison in Montana Territory at a site to be selected by the Territorial Legislature, subject to approval by the Secretary of Interior. On the day the appropriation became law, the Territorial Legislative Assembly instructed C.S. Ream and William Sturgis to locate a site. They chose Algenta [Northeast of Bannock], but were overruled by the Territorial government. On November 19, 1867, the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Montana approved the Deer Lodge site. An eleven and 4/5 acre site in Deer Lodge was selected and Montana Territorial Governor Green Clay Smith notified O.H. Browning, the Secretary of Interior of the action. However, a group of Deer Lodge residents (including Granville Stuart and J.S. Pemberton) contested the Territorial government’s claim to the site until finally the U. S. Attorney General’s Office settled the issue by ruling that the United States already owned the land. Dr. Armistead Hughes Mitchell, pioneer physician and surgeon in the Deer Lodge Valley, was appointed as Superintendent of Construction and Building in 1869 by President Grant to begin the actual construction of the Territorial Prison. He was immediately faced with a fiscal problem. The original prison design, by a Mr. Mollett representing the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, would cost at least $100,000 to construct, according to James Cavanaugh, Montana’s Territorial Delegate; however, only $40,000 had been appropriated. In response to the limited amount of available money, Dr. Mitchell began a series of cost-cutting project revisions which eventually reduced the original design from a central building with North and South cell wings to a single wing constructed of granite (which was cheaper than cement). This “Left wing of the Montana Penitentiary’ was complete by October 6, 1870 and ownership transferred from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office to the Territory of Montana on May 15, 1873.
“From the very beginning, it was apparent that the new wing failed to satisfy even minimal expectations. The finished wing entailed ‘nothing but bare stone walls, roof, floor, fourteen brick cells, six by eight feet, in the clear — with nothing between them and the roof, and only gratings for the lower windows. Territorial Governor Benjamin Potts bemoaned the prison’s ‘ unfinished condition’, maintaining that to complete the structure required at least an additional $4,500”
The Montana Legislative Assembly authorized Governor Benjamin F. Potts to appoint a three-member director’s board (Hugh Duncan, J. H. Robertson, Granville Stuart) and a warden (C. B. Adriance) to oversee the new Territorial facility. As their first act, the new directors petitioned for additional cells: “…We would recommend …the Legislature to make an application to Congress for an appropriation to complete the present wing. The completion of this wing will give us twenty-eight additional cells, and judging from the fact that we now have nineteen prisoners, and that most of the recent arrivals have been for long terms, many of the cells asked for will soon be required” After operating the facility for about one year, the Montana Territorial government decided that running a prison was unacceptably expensive and requested the Federal Government to once again resume administrative responsibility. The Act of June 20, 1874 restored Federal operational control and on August 1, 1874, U. S. Marshall William F. Wheeler assumed duties as the Prison’s Administrator. At the urging of Montana’s elected officials, Marshall Wheeler constructed an additional tier of 14 cells at a cost of $6,000 using convict labor for the project. He also enclosed the prison yard with a twelve-foot high wood fence. [Although Wheeler used inmate labor for prison construction in 1877, he indicated that although the inmates made their own clothes, cooked, cut lumber and performed “all that is done for the prison and themselves” the greatest misfortune to the prisoners was that they had no regular employment. Marshall Wheeler tried unsuccessfully to provide inmate contract laborers for Deer Lodge residential projects, as the prison offered no employment or industrial training beyond day-to-day facility related work.]
On July 7, 1884, the amount of $15,000 was appropriated to complete the unfinished portions of the Prison because of a need for more inmate housing. However, Governor John Schuyler Crosby’s newly appointed Commission of Examiners found the East and West walls of the existing facility had no stone foundations; extended only eighteen inches into the ground, and were composed of soggy brick which could not support additional weight. Although the prison urgently needed additional cells, the available money was used to build a central office building with guard dormitories. This was done over the protests of U. S. Marshall Alexander B. Botkin, the Superintendent of Construction. Finally, on March 3, 1885, Congress appropriated $25,000 for completion of the Montana Territorial Prison and, by the spring of 1886, the South Wing was completed. This was a three-storied brick cell house containing a three-tier block of brick cells. There were forty-two new cells, which increased the facilities’ overall inmate capacity by eightyfour. [ Status as of March 3, 1885: 70 cells in the prison — 14 constructed in 1870, 14 in 1874, and 42 in 1886. With double bunking, total capacity was 140].
Three years later, on November 8, 1889, Montana became the forty-first state and assumed ownership of a Prison, which it could not afford to operate, and certainly not renovate or modernize. In February 1890, the Board of Prison Commissioners contracted out the entire Prison operation at the rate of 70 cents per capita per diem to Colonel Thomas McTague and Frank Conley for a term of one year. The contract was renewed year-by-year until, in 1909, another firm underbid Conley and McTague. However the State owed Conley and McTague money for construction costs and inmate care which neither the State nor the newly selected contractors could afford to repay. As a result, Montana reassumed operational control over the Prison and appointed Conley as Warden, a position he retained until relieved of his duties by Governor Joseph Dixon in 1921. When Conley began running the Montana prison it was overcrowded (198 inmates), deteriorating, and increasing in population. Inmates were being housed in outbuildings in the prison yard, carpenter shop, storehouse and wash house. There was also no substantial security fence or wall. Warden Conley began his administration by beginning extensive renovation of the security fence and construction of a log cell house, which could house sixty-eight inmates. [With this addition, he was housing about 242 inmates in a facility with 70 actual cells (capacity 140 double-bunked), plus 68 inmates in the log cell house].
our findings and experiences this time around- I personally had my foot touched and some of the people with us experienced voices and feelings of not being alone also caught some great pics.