Prisons. Buildings constructed to hold individuals as a form of punishment for committing crimes.

A place I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of us actively try to avoid.

While there are literally thousands of state and federal prisons, local jails, and detention facilities across the United States,

there are a few that come to mind most menacingly.

Writers Island, Eastern State Penitentiary, San Quentin State Prison, and Sing Sing correctional facility are among them.

Each of these facilities has their own unique and often dark past, but none so famous as the rock.

This island sitting ominously amongst the crashing waves of San Francisco Bay is home to the quintessential maximum security prison.

Alcatraz has gone down in history as a site synonymous with violence, imprisonment, and oppression.

Throughout its past, those who have found themselves on the rock have been dying to get off of it.

Inmates have filed down bars, popped through roofs, dug through tunnels, and plunged into icy, shark-infested waters, all in hopes of escaping their confines.

But what you may not know is that this same location, renowned for violence and incarceration, also served as a beacon of peace and a symbol of regaining freedom.

The penitentiary closed its doors, but the island was not forgotten.

After hundreds of years of people digging their heels into the dirt, avoiding the rock at all costs, and risking bullets in their backs to escape it,

from November of 1969 to June of 1971, there were people risking it all to make it to the island, and who repeatedly returned, despite being forcibly removed.

After a long history of fighting to flee the island, the occupation of Alcatraz provided a brief moment in time where people didn't want to run from it, but instead fought to occupy it.

Welcome to National Park After Dark.

That was a really good intro, the fact that we're talking about breaking into Alcatraz and not out of it. What a twist when you were describing the way people escape and how everyone wants to leave and shark-infested waters.

I was just thinking the whole time of that story of the three guys who actually did escape Alcatraz, and I could just picture it, especially because there's like shows on it, and they show how they escape their escape route.

I'm really excited that we're doing a different story, because that one's so well known.

It's great that you brought that up because that is what I know of Alcatraz. That's what I was brought up basically from movies and TV and all that, and like you said, that story and others are so well publicized that you just think Alcatraz and prison and escape attempts.

This episode is not going to be like that. We'll cover the history of Alcatraz and touch upon some of that stuff, but that's not what the main episode is about.

So Alcatraz with a twist is what today is all about. So the reason that I chose this episode today is because November is Native American Heritage Month.

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