History
Originally the site of a brick plant, the State of Ohio purchased the property in 1913 to be used as a satellite prison for the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, for the care of aged and disabled prisoners. But on September 2, 1927 guard Grant Weakly was shot and killed during an escape attempt while escorting prisoners to the dentist office. The escapees Patrick Riley and Fred Kellogg were apprehended in nearby New Lexington, Ohio.
In 1928, prisoners rebuilt the main wing in brick after the original building burned down. Between 1935 and 1938 the prison was closed while a third floor was added to the main cellblock. An educational wing was added in 1970. On January 7, 1974, two prisoners took three women hostage at knife-point. After several hours, the stand-off was ended when 28 Ohio State Highway officers rushed the room. One inmate was killed and the other was injured.
Ohio State authorities closed the prison permanently in 1977.
Read more about this topic: Junction City Prison
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)