Montana State Prison - Warden Conley Years - Conley Builds

Conley Builds

Possibly the most important, or at least longest lasting, contribution Warden Conley made to the Montana State Prison are the plethora of buildings he left in his wake. He believed that idleness bred insurrection, so he set about using prison labor to build the prison.

At first, Conley focused on bettering the prison facility. Immediately after taking the position of warden, he put the inmates to work to build a log cell-house to alleviate the rampant overcrowding. The building housed 150 inmates in one large room in two tiers of wooden bunks, and was used on and off over the course of the next decade.

Conley waited for a few years before starting one of his biggest projects—the prison walls. In 1893, he put his prisoners to work to construct the 20 to 22 ft (6.7 m). high walls which extended underground for four feet and were 3½ ft. thick underground and tapered to two feet thick at the top. The wall was constructed of locally quarried sandstone mined, shaped, mortared, and placed by prison labor. The walls had six towers, a sally port to admit vehicles, and a smaller portal to admit people. The imposing structure with its crenellated towers dominates the southern end of Main Street Deer Lodge and resembles a medieval castle.

In 1896, Conley deemed the old Territorial Penitentiary insufficient, even after remodeling it to house 164 inmates, so he constructed the first of two cellblocks. The 1896 Cellblock bordered the Territorial building on its southern side and could house 256 inmates in four tiers of thirty-two cells, each measuring 6 ft (1.8 m). long, 8 ft (2.4 m). deep, and 7 ft 4 in (2.24 m) tall. None of these cells had plumbing, however, and inmates again used the bucket system: one for fresh water, the other for human waste. Each door locked individually, which, when combined with the wood stoves which heated the building and the wooden roof, created a safety hazard in the case of a fire. Electricity didn't enter the building until after the start of the 20th century, but this building was a marked improvement from the antiquated Territorial building.

In 1902, in response to concerns over women's rights, Conley built a separate building outside the walls for his female prisoners. It was a small, stuffy building with no plumbing and a tiny exercise yard, but it gave the women inmates a degree of separation and safety they had previously been denied. This building would eventually be converted into a maximum security facility in 1959 in response to the riot which happened in that year, and Montana's women prisoners would eventually be moved to their own prison.

1911 saw an extension of the original walls by 48,000 sq ft (4,500 m2). Tower Seven, in the middle of the eastern wall which bordered Main Street, became the main entrance to the prison and would remain so until the facility closed.

To respond to the ever-increasing number of inmates flooding the Montana correctional system, in 1912 Conley supervised the building of another cellblock. Called "Cellblock 1" by guards and prisoners, the building sandwiched the old Territorial building between itself and the 1896 cellblock, now called "Cellblock 2". The building was made of cut granite and prison-made brick, could house 400 prisoners in 200 cells along two corridors of four tiers of 25 cells each, and came complete with a sink and self-flushing toilet in each cell, a ventilation system, and a door-locking system which could open any combination of doors simultaneously.

In 1919, Warden Conley's personal friend William A. Clark, one of Butte, Montana's Copper Kings, donated $10,000 for the construction of a first in US Prison history—a prison theater. Dubbed the WA Clark Theatre, the pride of the Montana State Prison was completed in March 1920. It boasted seating for 1,000 people in leather-covered seats and catered to prisoners and members of the community alike. It hosted concerts, plays, prizefights, movies, and more. For Conley, it became an instant disciplinary tool; unruly inmates were denied access to the theater. The theater was a mainstay of prison life until its destruction by an unknown arsonist on 3 December 1975.

Though the buildings inside the prison grounds were extensive and labor and time consuming, Warden Conley did not stop there. During his tenure as warden, he used prison labor to run eleven separate ranches which produced beef, pork, poultry, and dairy products for prison use, a prison farm which produced vegetables for the inmates and feed for the animals on the ranches, and a slaughterhouse. He also built and operated a brickyard which could produce up to 60,000 bricks per day. His prisoners were also loggers, and they processed their lumber at a lumberyard and sawmill they had built. Conley also assisted the state by using inmate labor to build 11 buildings of the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs, 4 buildings for the Montana State Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Galen, and over 500 miles (800 km) of roads in the State. About road building, Conley stated:

The work done by the men in the way of road construction is itself of inestimable value to the state and counties; and greater still are the benefits derived by the prisoners. The outside work, the absence of physical restraint, and the trust and confidence instill in each man a sense of pride, both for himself and for his work. He values his advantages and his privileges. He does not brood and ponder over his sufferings and wrongs, his failures and disappointments. He awakens to a new appreciation of life and determines to make a better future.

His garb was in tatters, his beard an ugly stubble, his eyes bloodshot. He had the gauntiness in feature of a wasted consumptive. He was shackled. He was a man of stalwart frame, but his bony hands looked ugly. He might as well have been three weeks out of the world…For a time, in the prison yard, he acted like one who was an utter stranger to this earth.