WELCOME TO THE COLORADO PRISON MUSEUM

Cañon City, in southern Colorado, is the home of the Museum of Colorado Prisons, a showcase of the atmosphere and exhibits of days, staff and inmates gone by.

A visit to the the Royal Gorge Region isn't complete without stopping and "doing" time in this historical cell house that was the original Women's Correctional Facility constructed in 1935.

http://www.prisonmuseum.org/

We woke up the next morning and had our nice hot breakfast, it wasn't too bad at the hotel. I packed up all of our stuff into the suitcases and we did a double-check of the rooms and we were off to our next stop - the prison. It was only a few miles from the hotel which was nice. They had a bunch of old items outside the prison to look at and in one small area they had one of the old gas chambers. They had pictures of the gas chamber were they took it out from its original location and had information regarding how it worked and when they did executions. It was a little frightening, but very interesting. Once we toured the outside of the area we went inside to take our tour. The front desk staff was excellent and super attentive to the kids and Katelynn with her millions of questions. You basically go into each cell and it has newspaper articles and other items pertaining to a specific piece of history for the prison. There is no tour guide, but they do have audio that walks you through everything and has interviews from old staff and people talking about specific instances or prisoners or workers. I listened to a little bit of it, but was distracted by the kids and we walked around and just did our own thing. It was a little unnerving and eerie after being in the building as time passed. There is a basement area where the women prisoners ate and prepared meals among other things. There were a few areas that we weren't allowed in. The kids did extremely well walking through this building and not touching items they weren't supposed to and I was a little shocked by it. This had to have been pretty boring for them. Dan's parents seemed to enjoy the tour as well. Dan and I were done so we took the kids to the outside area and had them picking up pine cones while we waited. One of the prisons in Canon City is within a few feet of this prison and we could here the inmates talking and here instructions being called over the intercom, it was a little strange. We took some pictures and then packed up and we were off to our final destination - Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. A one hour drive north from Canon City.