Wyoming Territorial Prison

Built of rough grey sandstone on open land west of Laramie in 1872, the Wyoming Territorial Penitentiary began taking prisoners early in 1873, just a few years after the Union Pacific railroad brought settlers – and outlaws – to the territory. It got off to a poor start: a fire in 1873 and repeated jailbreaks saw 11 of its first 44 inmates escape. It ran on the Auburn system of the day, with prisoners kept silent, dressed in striped uniforms, known by numbers and marched in lockstep. A second cellblock, added in 1889, raised capacity to 150, and after statehood in 1890 it served as Wyoming’s first state penitentiary.

Its most famous inmate was Robert LeRoy Parker, already calling himself Butch Cassidy, who served 18 months of a two-year sentence for horse theft from 1894 to 1896 before a governor’s pardon; it was the only prison ever to hold him. Other inmates included a Wild Bunch member caught after the 1899 Wilcox train robbery, a 14-year-old horse thief, and Dr. May Preston Slosson’s congregation – in 1899 she became the first woman appointed as a prison chaplain in the United States. When the new state penitentiary opened at Rawlins in 1901, the Laramie prison wound down and closed within a couple of years.

The University of Wyoming then used the site as an agricultural experiment station, turning the cellblock into livestock housing, until 1989. Community volunteers restored the prison in the 1990s, and in 2004 it became a state historic site, with exhibits on outlaws, prison reform and ranching history.

The prison’s ghost lore is modest beside its larger cousin in Rawlins. Wyoming’s tourism office names its best-known spirit as Julius Greenwelch, inmate No. 338, serving life for the murder of his wife, who persuaded officials to let him run a cigar-making business behind the walls and died in 1901; visitors say the smell of cigars announces him. A Colorado paranormal group reported an open equipment case closing by itself during an investigation.

The smell of cigar smoke attributed to Julius Greenwelch, and equipment moving or closing by itself during paranormal investigations.

The main prison building and its restored cellblocks, the Prison Industries (broom factory) building and the Warden’s House on the 197-acre site beside the Big Laramie River.

The prison’s Butch Cassidy exhibit is a highlight of Wyoming’s outlaw history, and the site features in Wyoming tourism guides to haunted prisons alongside the Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins.