Old Pen Joint Powers Board & Friends of the Old Pen
500 West Walnut Street
Rawlins, Wyoming 82301
Website: www.wyomingfrontierprison.com
E-mail: wfp@trib.com

While outlaws roamed the windswept high plains, canyons and mountains of post Civil War Wyoming, the territorial legislature was planning a state-of-the-art penitentiary at Rawlins in anticipation of statehood. This new Wyoming State Penitentiary, which would serve from 1901 until 1981 would send a strong message to freewheeling desperadoes... Wyoming would no longer be a haven for the lawless!

The Old Pen, as the Wyoming Frontier Prison is affectionately called today, is “haunted by history” around every corner. Tales of great train robbers, wily escapes and of women driven to crimes of passion are told on the scheduled guided tours. Visitors may browse through history in the prison museum where historical information sits side by side with confiscated inmate made weapons and an exhibit of the movie “Prison” filmed on location at the Old Pen. The tour includes all the cell blocks of the Old Pen, the area used for solitary confinement, the kitchen, yard, gallows, gas chamber, hospital, and chapel. The tours are entertaining as well as historical, including stories of specific prisoners previously housed in the Wyoming Frontier Prison.