I’m doing an all-electric road trip across California into Arizona.
I’ve got delayed a little in Yuma, Arizona, at the Yuma Territorial Prison – apparently there was a problem with my paperwork when I bought my admission ticket. I’m sure it will all be fixed soon, but if someone could bake me a cake in the meantime that would be great.
The Yuma Territorial Prison operated from 1876-1909. It was relatively progressive for its day, with a library and even a prison band. But it had a fearsome reputation because of its two rows of granite high-security cells that became miserably hot in the Arizona summer.
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A few years after the prison was closed, the Yuma High School burned down and school classes were temporarily moved into the former prison while a new school was built. This earned the school sports teams the sarcastic nickname “the Criminals”. A name which they then seized as their own and still use today.
