John the Mouse: December 2018

The most important structure of any civilization is its roads. Roads were carved out of Alcatraz’s hard Sandstone. They begun blasting in the fall of 1853 from the wharf to the guardhouse site, it continued to the northwest end of the island where the Model Industries Building sits. Part of this road became a covered way to help protected it from enemy fire. I found that AL-227 was assigned to it.

The next road AL-228 branched off from AL-227 just after the guardhouse and ran to the top of the island. It was completed in 1857. The distance from the dock to the Cell house is about 1/4 mile and the elevation change is 130 feet, its like walking up a 13-story building.

As you walk on the roads and walkways you will notice that they are steep. You will see granite used in the earlier buildings and walls that came from China. As they blasted more rock out of the way for the road way. They use the California Sandstone in more of the construction on the Island. They opened up a quarry where the New Industries Building sits to help gather more sandstone.

As time went on more little roads and walkways where added. After construction of the new prison, the road completely encircle the island on the backside of the Island down to the parade ground.

Utility trenches were built into the roads to handle water, sewage pipes and electric lines. Eventually, most of the roads were topped with either concrete or asphalt.

I wanted to find out how many miles of roads where on this 22 acre Island. And what do you know, google didn’t have an answer for me. Maps was no help so I went to Microsoft to help me out with there measure tool on there bing map.

So after marking out all the roads I got a little over 1 and 1/3 Miles. I think that’s close another for government work. Just keep in mind that going up and down on these steep elevation will add more to my flat measurements. Feel free to leave in the comments if you get a better number than I did.

There is 2 other trails that I didn’t add to the number even thou you can drive on part of them with truck.

Thank-you for all your comments and viewing the video. I have other videos I would like you to view.

Map:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18IyJwLu-3PoR48vxQ78zhUXd7jU&usp=sharing

Donation:
cloakcoin:CBs9HooP6g2u1y4pFJdWdaiaeBV1b7x8Xe

Some Picture Credit:
NPS Photo
© Bengt af Geijerstam/Studio 8–10

By Photographed by and copyright of © David Corby (User:Miskatonic, uploader) 2006 — Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=642700

http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/

https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/photosmultimedia/index.htm

https://www.nps.gov/

By US Federal Government — http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=34304, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5608078

By Tom.k — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11630638

https://www.findagrave.com/

https://www.sfgenealogy.org/

http://alcatraztherock.com

https://www.loc.gov/

SIKA CORPORATION Lyndhurst, NJ

Park Archives and Records Center

https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/alcatraz-cinnamon-sugar-cookies/