a little history from my area.

[chuck123wapati]

Here is a bit of history from my area of Wyoming and probably a little unknow history of the leather trade for you folks to ponder. The leather work of prisoners, I live in the same town as the state penitentiary and it had a long history of leather work reaching back to territorial days. In the early years the prison system was very self sustaining, in that the prisoners would build or make almost everything they used. There was an honor farm that was an actual farm growing all the food and meat for the prisoners. They also made their cloths and of course their shoes also. the prison had a complete shoe shop and the trade, all the trades,  was taught to inmates by other inmates as back in the day there were no people working for the system unless they were guards all the work was done by inmate labor and a lead man was appointed to run the various shops, he was in charge of teaching the help and running whatever shop. In the inmates off times they could do hobbies to sell so a lot of them would do leather work or braid horse hair, make small wooden projects etc. Local people could buy this stuff at the front gate of the building, you can google our frontier prison to get a look at it if you like. As a kid I can remember seeing and hearing people talk about the leather work done, I remember the saddle shaped purses were the cats meow back then. Anyway in about 1985 a new prison was built and I went to work there as a maintenance tech, one of the first  as prior to this all the work was done by the inmates. Anyway there was room for a number of hobby shops in the new facility so the old timers who had hobbies got the shops, there were buckle making shop a couple leather shops, horse hair braiding, silversmithing, fly tying as well as many inmates still did art and stuff in their cells. There were also trades taught to the inmates , there was an upholstery shop, welding, machine shop, auto mechanics and carpentry shop, employees could take a vehicle in for example and have it totally rebuilt, painted and reupholstered for pennies above the cost of materials..  The frontier prison had a gift shop that was kept open then to the public for selling the hobby work as well many companies hired inmates to tie flies, I could buy a dozen of any type of fly for three bucks and as these boys tied thousands they were GOOOOD flies indeed. The leather work had by that time become very well known as through the years word of mouth made it  place to stop if you were traveling through. One fellow, I cant remember his name at the moment had one of the shops and had five or six other inmates working for him, he made thousands of belts bags purses etc, as well as horse hair items hat bands, halters, yes even holsters. They were taken to the gift shop in town and sold there. One of my jobs in the summer was to run a yard crew at the old prison in town so I saw first hand the amount of goods this fellow made an sold. Once a month people would come down from Jackson hole and literally buy every piece of leather and horse hair in the shop. This one shop made over 50 k a year and the inmate owner would send the money to his wife. This all came to an end when three inmates killed an officer trying to escape. All of the hobby shops were shut down and all of the inmates had to ship their stuff out of the prison or have it destroyed. That happened in the 90s and still years after people would call the prison to ask if the leather work or horse hair was still being done. If you google Tom Horn , he was an "enforcer" for the cattle companies, there is a picture of him braiding a rope out of horse hair while in prison. 

[Rbarleatherworks]

Love this ... Thanks for sharing Chuck

[Rhale]

Thanks for the history, loved the Tom Horn movie with Steve McQueen. Thanks Rodney 

[Frodo]

Interesting. .  Thanks for the history of your area. 

 

i worked on the Super max in Florence Colorado. also worked on 6 other prisons. Tried to work on them all. The law is. If you worked on it, they can not send you to it. LOL

 

[chuck123wapati]

17 hours ago, Frodo said:

Interesting. .  Thanks for the history of your area. 

 

i worked on the Super max in Florence Colorado. also worked on 6 other prisons. Tried to work on them all. The law is. If you worked on it, they can not send you to it. LOL

 

yw! lol good luck with that thought they would just put you on the maintenance crew. 

[Frodo]

1 hour ago, chuck123wapati said:

yw! lol good luck with that thought they would just put you on the maintenance crew. 

I roughed in the plumbing for the Travis county Correctional Complex New Kitchen.

We were working over time.  When we decided to knock off for the day, we found they had locked the construction gate.

So we started looking for a way to get out. We found a hole in the fence, slipped threw it and walked down the road to the guard shack. We told the Guard he needed to unlock the gate so we could get the Truck out.  He looked at as with a puzzled expression. Then asked, If you were locked inside how did not get out?

I pointed down the fence line and said. through that big hole in the fence. LOL

ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. He got on the radio and guards started coming from every where. No one had escaped but they were embarrassed as hell about a big hole in the fence.

 

[Tugadude]

Fascinating stuff!  Shame that it all came to a screeching halt.  

[Tugadude]

So I did a little googling on the prison and found some fascinating information.  If you have the time it is worth looking up.  Butch Cassidy spent some time in the Wyoming Frontier Prison back in the day, before he formed the Wild Bunch.

[Ferg]

Since I am older than most of you, eighty six in January 2020, I remember a lot of those things first hand.

My only connection with the Prison System was a number of years ago. One in Southern Ohio made wood Pallets. They weren't getting them out fast enough so they were looking for a small wood shop to make the parts for the pallets. The material would be supplied by a prison farm sawmill and brought to our shop. The material would be Cottonwood. Grows where it can get lots of water and is obviously dripping with moisture. Later, they decided to supply "Junk" Treated material. When still wet from treatment this stuff can rust most any metal it is aligned with.

We were very close to taking it on until I checked with some shops that were using the material.

Ferg

Edited December 17, 2019 by Ferg

[kgg]

Interesting stuff, but begs the question what do they get now as far as learning / doing a legit trade / skill or ?

kgg