Take a Mysterious Alcatraz Tour

San Francisco, also referred to as the City by the Bay is a very popular tourist destination – attracting people from all over the world to view the bustling Financial District, the Fisherman's Wharf, and the fascinating Alcatraz Island. The island is no longer used as a prison, but Alcatraz is an infamous island, and the Alcatraz tour gives modern day visitors a glimpse into the past, and the difficult life the prisoners led.

The History of Alcatraz Island

Alcatraz has not served as a prison for many years. In the past, the island prison served as a home for the worst offenders – those who clearly were beyond any hope for rehabilitation. The prisoners sent here had no hope of escape, and would serve out their sentences on this San Francisco Bay island.

If one could escape from the cell, make it past the guards, climb over the walls while avoiding the detection of the guards, then they merely had to swim 3 miles through frigid, shark infested waters to escape to freedom. Needless to say, this was not something that was going to be easy to achieve and Alcatraz quickly became an infamous and feared prison. In a way, it was the Americanized, scaled back version of the notorious French prison colony Devil’s Island.

The experience of visiting the island on an Alcatraz tour provides the public with a rare glimpse into a world that has long since departed. Alcatraz, despite its ominous nature, represents a twisted piece of Americana when gangs and gangsters – driven by the economic collapse of the depression – committed irresponsible crime sprees that needed to be deterred. Alcatraz became the symbol of deterrence as serving hard time on The Rock gave many would be criminals second thoughts.

It may seem strange for an Alcatraz tour to be so poplar. The main reason for this sudden surge of interest is curiosity. What an Alcatraz tour offers is an insight into the lives of the prisoners, and an understanding of America's history. A prison such as Alcatraz would never be used today, and a tour serves as a reminder of how we have changed in our treatment of our criminals.

An Alcatraz tour is not all about history – the chance to explore the unknown, and see a place that so many books and films have been made about should offer many people a lot of fun and excitement. Taking an Alcatraz tour is a way to see something that is a massive part of American pop culture.

Filed under North American Tours by Darlene.

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Comments

Human curiosity is a funny thing, isn't it? It's like a train wreck… you just can't look away, no matter how horrible. Alcatraz is an intriguing island and prison because of it's dark history, questionable hauntings and isolated location. It's hard for so many of us to understand the state of the world during the depression and why it drove people to commit the crimes they did. A tour through Alcatraz really takes you back in time and shows how things have changed since then.

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This is a good tour if you like to take pictures of scenery. Or if you like to see what certain places from movies look like as well. It has a great history behind it and many people said there are places that the tour went that made them feel as though they were being watched. I say they are just spooked by the mere facts of Alcatraz. Having prisons on island like this were very rare, but made a lot of sense to me. As the only known escapees, were not recovered in the waters nor were they found ashore.

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