Groff David - Where Is Alcatraz?

Juan Manuel de Ayala

Alcatraz Island, in foggy San Francisco Bay, remained hidden from Spanish explorers for more than two centuries. In 1775, a young Spanish naval officer named Juan Manuel de Ayala was the first to spot The Rock, which was covered in pelicans. He named the steep, barren island Isla de los Alcatracesor Island of the Pelicans in Spanish.

On June 29, 1776, Spanish colonists founded a mission, or church, on the mainland. They named the mission after Saint Francis of Assisior San Francisco in Spanish.

When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, San Francisco and the rest of California became part of Mexico. In 1846, the United States and Mexico began a bloody war over land in the West. The United States took over California after the Mexican-American War ended in 1848. That same year, gold was discovered in California!

San Francisco was a small town until the Gold Rush. As people moved west in search of gold, the citys population exploded, from a few hundred in 1848 to over thirty thousand just one year later.

San Francisco quickly became Americas biggest and most important city on the West Coast. America needed to defend it against its enemies.

Alcatraz Island, standing guard over San Francisco in the middle of the bay, was the perfect place for a fortress.

Work began on Fort Alcatraz in 1853. One man said the island was nothing but solid rock covered by a tiny bit of soil, with a crust of bird poop on top! The sandstone on Alcatraz could be cut with a hatchet. So stronger building materials had to be shipped in from as far away as New York City and China.

A lighthouse opened in 1854. It was the first one on the West Coast of the United States. By December 1859, construction of the citadel, or fortress, was complete. The three-story citadel stood on the islands highest point. The citadels brick walls were more than four feet thick and had many narrow slits from which to fire rifles.

Eventually, Fort Alcatraz held more than one hundred cannons, which could shoot four-hundred-pound cannonballs a distance of nearly three miles! Later, when the citadel became housing for officers, these cannonballs were used to decorate the gardens!

The United States during the Civil War

Brigadier General Edwin Sumner

In 1861, Fort Alcatraz was put on high alert. The states of the American South had split from the Union. They formed a new country called the Confederate States of America. The Civil War had begun.

Brigadier General Edwin Sumner, the man in charge of Fort Alcatraz, told his soldiers to fire upon any ship that was flying a Confederate flag. Alcatraz not only defended San Francisco from Confederate attack, it also became a military prison. Soldiers who left their posts or committed crimes were sent to the island to serve their time. The crew of a Confederate ship was also imprisoned at Alcatraz.