In August 1934, the first group of inmates arrived at Alcatraz, the maximum-security prison perched on a small island in San Francisco Bay. The Big House on the Bay was the ultimate destination for ...

Alcatraz Island, a military fort turned an army prison in the San Francisco Bay, is most well known for operating as a federal prison from 1934 until 1963. That distinction is being challenged after ...

A view of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary from the water in 1938. Courtesy National Park Service. On Nov. 10 1936, San Mateo County police made a public announcement that seemed too audacious to be true ...

Originally used as a military prison in the 19th century, in 1933 the American government decided Alcatraz would keep the county’s most dangerous criminals behind bars. Yes, those that no ...

"It caught the public's imagination," says Heaney. "We will be dead and gone for years, and people will still be saying, coming off the boat: 'That's Alcatraz.'" iStockphoto Frank Heaney can't escape ...

The film, Concrete, Steel and Paint, told the story of the Philadelphia Mural project in which inmates and victims of crime painted a mural on parachute cloth in the prison the inmates were housed, ...

TV and movie mogul J.J. Abrams ("Lost," "Super 8") is hoping you’ll be as haunted by “Alcatraz” as he was by his visits to the long-abandoned prison island. “It feels a little bit like a ghost house, ...

Once again, California is a hotspot of political unrest. This time, the source is one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist attractions, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The penitentiary closed in ...

The maximum-security, minimum-privilege prison operated for nearly 30 years but shut down because it cost three times more to run Alcatraz than other federal prisons NBC Universal, Inc. Alcatraz ...