Alcatraz Island, which hosted its last inmate 50 years ago today, was also home to prison workers and their families who returned to the island this morning to mark the anniversary and recount their lives there.
Thursday is a red-letter day in the history of Alcatraz Island - the 50th anniversary of the day the prison closed. It was the end of one era and the beginning of another.
Over a million visitors tour Alcatraz every year, but a recent discovery has revealed another attraction that lives within the shadows of this historical prison: glowing millipedes of Alcatraz.
From NightLife at the Academy to free walking tours to Japantown and beyond, 49 spots in San Francisco that are new, newly transformed or underappreciated. Time to explore!
Alcatraz has more stories than its dark past as America's most feared prison. One part of its history is the Indian occupation from the winter of 1969 to the spring of 1971, when a band of American Indians seized the island after the prison closed. They hoped to turn it into an Indian cultural center, or perhaps a small university devoted to native studies.
Off the coast of San Francisco, millions of people pay to go to prison. They come to the island of Alcatraz to tour the dark cells of probably the most infamous American prison.
Rooted into locale, the Lands End Lookout is a remarkable urban encounter with the natural forces that still shape this region.
A state-of-the-art visitor's center will open this weekend at Lands end in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The Parks Conservancy in partnership with the National Park Service engaged 34,484 volunteers who put in 513,884 hours in 2011 alone. That kind of work would cost $10.9 million on the open market.
Most of the more than one million tourists who visit the famous former prison annually never get to experience Alcatraz Island at night or see its spooky, decrepit hospital experiences unique only to the night tour.
Andy Goldsworthy plots the curves of new Presidio creation
