CATALINA PRISON CAMP HISTORY

For many years, the only way to get to the top of the Catalina Mountains was the hard way.  A trail led from lower Sabino Canyon to soldier Camp and to Summerhaven.  You either hiked the trail or rode a horse or burro.  Everything that was needed was packed up on the back of burros.  In 1920, the first road was completed that allowed automobiles to get to the top of the mountains.  Its main drawback was that it started in Oracle and was a narrow winding dirt road that was only a single lane wide for the last seven miles. This route to Summerhaven was also a long 75 miles from the heart of Tucson.  This road is still in existence today and came in handy when the current Catalina Highway was temporarily washed out a few years ago.

In 1926, the push for a new road up the South side of the mountains was started.  Arizona Legislator F. E. A. Kimball started the push and the editor of the Tucson Citizen, Frank Hitchcock, quickly took up the cause.  In the next two years, two bond elections were held and both went down to defeat.  Hitchcock then took his case to both forestry and highway officials.  On 13 March 1933, Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace approved a 25 mile two lane surfaced road from the foot of the mountains to Summerhaven.  Next came the question of who would build the road.  This was answered when Hitchcock convinced federal prison authorities that a prison camp in the mountains could serve both as a cheap labor source and a means to rehabilitate the inmates.

Car thieves, bootleggers, tax evaders, draft dodgers, Mexicans entering the country illegally, conscientious objectors and even 44 Japanese-Americans who had refused Executive Order 9066 were sent to the Mount Lemon Federal Honor Camp.  Between the summer of 1933 and the spring of 1951 when the camp was closed, over 8,000 prisoners were sent to work on the road.  Vail Corral, at an elevation of 4,860 feet was chosen as a permanent site for the prison.  However, pack train was still the only way up from the south to the site.  From 1933 to 1939, the prisoners were housed in a tent camp at the foot of the mountains until the first seven miles of the road could be completed to the permanent site.  The prison was moved to the permanent site during a February 1939 snowstorm.  The facilities were much like those of any Western Mountain campground.  Several barracks, a mess hall with kitchen, a laundry, a powerhouse and a small sawmill.  The camp had no walls or fences.  Prisoners were simply told not to venture unguarded beyond a white line painted on the ground.

On March 10th 1951, the road was declared finished.  In 1958, the camp was converted to a Youth Camp for seventeen to twenty-two year olds who had been convicted for such things as car thefts.  These youths worked in the Catalina District for several years on fire suppression and recreation clean-up and construction.  In 1967 the United States Bureau of Prisons turned control of the facility over to the State of Arizona and the camp was used as an Indian Youth Rehabilitation Center until 1973.  Not long after, bulldozers demolished the buildings on the site.

Earlier we indicated that 44 Japanese-Americans were interned at the camp.  Gordon Hirabayshi was one of those interned.  He was a senior at the University of Washington when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which called for the forced evacuation of anyone with 1/6th or more Japanese blood from the Western states and interned in what were in effect concentration camps.  Hirabayshi chose not to submit to the order and challenged authorities to respect his rights as an American Citizen not to be imprisoned.  As a result of the hysteria of the day, he lost his case.  He requested that he serve his time at the Mt. Lemon Prison so that he would be able to work out of doors while incarcerated.  That was fine with Federal Authorities but they refused to pay his fare to transfer him from the prison in Washington where he was being held.  He ended up hitch hiking his way to Tucson and after reporting in, went to a movie while waiting for officials to find and sort out his paperwork.  Hirabayshi never gave up on his belief that the order was unconstitutional and in 1987, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals vindicated him.  In honor of Hirabayshi’s principles, the former prison camp was renamed the Gordon Hirabayshi Recreation Site. 


Summarized by T N Johnson from an Arizona Daily Star article by Bonnie Henry, a 30 August 1998 Daily Star Article and a 14 July 2000 Green Valley News article.

Additional Material: GVHC Library File 19