Wyoming Territorial Prison
A prison museum in Laramie, Wyoming, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Wyoming Territorial Prison is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Former federal and state prison preserved as a museum. It sits in the archive under dark history. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is Wyoming Territorial Prison haunted?
No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.
The record — long form
Wyoming Territorial Prison is where Butch Cassidy did his time. The stone penitentiary went up in 1872 for the territory's 'evil doers of all classes and kinds' — one of the few federal prisons in the West, the only one in Wyoming, holding the railroad-town desperadoes the 'Hell on Wheels' settlements produced. Cassidy was prisoner there 1894–96 for horse theft, eighteen months of the Wyoming that made him, before the Wild Bunch and the legend.
The prison's population was the frontier's overflow — violent and desperate men in the stone block on the Big Laramie, the discipline on the second floor where the mess hall was. Only two of the thousand inmates died inside: the leper and Julius Greenwald, the Polish cigar maker who was prisoner No. 338 and whose cigars had a regional market. Greenwald died of natural causes; the staff says he's the ghost anyway — the cigar smoke that appears in the cellblocks, the footsteps and whistling and the female laugh in the empty rooms.
The prison became the university's stock farm for ninety years — cattle in the exercise yard, the experiment station in the buildings — until the '90s restoration made it a state historic site. The file keeps the prison's unusual mercy: a territorial penitentiary where the death toll was two, the famous inmate went on to the legend, and the cigar maker who died of a heart attack is the ghost the staff can't quite explain.
Wyoming Territorial Prison is the archive's Cassidy file — the 1872 penitentiary that held Butch Cassidy, the university stock farm for ninety years, haunted by the cigar-making prisoner who died of natural causes.
Why this file matters
Wyoming Territorial Prison is the archive's merciful-prison file — the territorial penitentiary that held Cassidy and a thousand others, lost only two inmates to death, and keeps the cigar-smoke ghost of the one who died of a heart attack.
A prison that became a farm keeps its ghost — the file's suggestion being that the Territorial Prison's hold is Greenwald's cigar: the smoke in the empty cellblock, the prisoner's trademark still detectable, and the building that was a stock farm longer than it was a prison.
The Wyoming Territorial Prison is a former federal government prison near Laramie, Wyoming. Built in 1872, it is one of the oldest buildings in Wyoming. It operated as a federal penitentiary from 1872 to 1890, and as a state prison from 1890 to 1901. It was then transferred to the University of Wyoming and was used as an agricultural experiment station until 1989. In 1991, the facility was opened to the public, and in 2004, it was designated as Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site.
Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic SiteDocumented history
Prisoners built the warden’s house in 1875; prison industry included broom production. Wyoming Territorial Prison's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site' carry the record. The date is part of the site's documented spine.
Verified historyAlliance for Historic Wyoming
Sources on file
- 01Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic SiteAlliance for Historic Wyoming · historical society · A2
- 02Wyoming State Penitentiary historyWyoming Department of Corrections · government · A1
Field notes & open questions
Preservation article gives 1872, while Department of Corrections describes federal construction in 1873; distinguish construction, opening and original prison phases before choosing a core year. Older article fees omitted.