 So we're going to go through the island's history here. That's what I do. I'm an interp ranger and basically give the talks on Alcatraz and also protect the resources. And one last thing I really got to stress that we are doing is restoration of the buildings on Alcatraz to stabilize the buildings and to keep that island open for future generations to visit and to learn about the layers of history. There's a ugly rumor that Alcatraz is closing. We get people to come out and tell us that their neighbor instructed them they better get there soon because it's not going to be safe. But we're doing our best to stabilize the buildings and keep that island open. And so without further ado we should go through this little PowerPoint that I've got here. I've got some historic photos and some shots that I've taken over the years too. And I love this shot, the sunsets. We have an evening program even for the general public to go out to the island and see the lights that San Francisco come up. It's a spectacular place to view the Bay Area. The island is a sandstone rock. And what you're looking at here on this photo is the island with vegetation and gardens now. But when the American Indians, Native Americans in the area ventured out to Alcatraz, they were going to a barren rock. It was a sandstone rock probably with a lot of white bird guano on it, but nothing else. And so it was a perfect habitat for seabirds. And the name Alcatraz comes from the Spanish explorers looking out on the rock and saying la isla de los Alcatrazis, the island of the strange bird. The pelican we believe was the bird that they were seeing on that island. So it was a very large bird, Rookery and the Spaniards give us the name, but they never built anything on Alcatraz. Mexican rule takes over after the Spanish explorers were there. And they never built anything on Alcatraz. In 1846, we have the bear flag revolt in California, John C. Fremont and Kit Carson came into San Francisco and they spiked the cannons at the Spanish fortifications that are now being run by Mexico at Fort Point, that location, the Castillo de San Juan was the fortress that had 13 cannons at the entrance to the Golden Gate. And the bear flag revolt folks spiked the cannons, drive a nail down the rear end of the barrel and break that nail off so you can't fire the cannon. And they proceed to Monterey, California and raise the California state flag, the bear flag, or some say it looks like a pig, the pig flag, but the original flag in 1846 is hoisted up and two years later gold is discovered in California. So California became a state of the Union in 1850 and by 1853 the United States Army arrives on Alcatraz Island. Now you can see from this photo here it's pointing to the Golden Gate. Some say that meant the gateway to the gold fields on either side of the gateway. It's a mile across from San Francisco to Marin. They, along with Alcatraz, constructed Fort Point on the San Francisco side and construction started at Fort Baker on the Marin side. And basically with Alcatraz in the middle of the bay you've got a crossfire they called it triangular defense. So this shot is a great shot of some of the soldiers lounging on Alcatraz. Now the cannons basically were mounted just before the Civil War but construction starts on Alcatraz in 1853. And by 1861 we've got roughly 100 cannon on Alcatraz to protect that harbor. This particular cannon that you're looking at would have fired 400 pound cannonball about a mile to two miles out into the San Francisco Bay. The only problem with these cannons on Alcatraz were that they weren't very accurate. They had a 5% accuracy. So you're kind of crossing your fingers hoping something's going to hit. Now another thing that arrives on Alcatraz is the lighthouse. And you've got a lot of vessel traffic coming in with the 49ers of course coming the next year. It took them a year to come around the horn and sail into San Francisco Bay. So you've got a very large navigational hazard out in the middle of the bay. That rock is a 22 acre rock and we needed a lighthouse. So we get the credit for the first lighthouse on the west coast was on Alcatraz Island. 1854 the light turns on and a lot of folks come out to the island just to see the location of where the first light was on the west coast. Now this particular lighthouse was torn down in 1909 and they needed a taller light to go over the new prison building. But a third order for now lens it would have been in the lamp room of that lighthouse structure there. So we get a lot of lighthouse aficionados. I had some folks out today that came all the way from Florida just to see where the first light on the west coast was. Now great shot of the cannonballs. They were ready for action when the civil war breaks out and this is just across from the lighthouse and often the distance you can see Angel Island. So the corner of the building that you have at the top of the hill is known as the Citadel and those appear to be some officers standing in front of those cannonballs there. That was their housing at the top of the hill. The Citadel was a three-story structure with a defensive ditch going around the building with two drawbridges and they were ready for action. You can see some cannon barrels too just to the right of the building there and quite a few cannonballs ready to fire at an enemy. That would be one of the largest type of cannons that they had and you can see a circular track there that you could pivot that cannon around in fire at a vessel coming in through the Golden Gate. Love this shot, you can see Telegraph Hill just to the left. That peak there would be Telegraph Hill where Koi Tower is now and North Beach just to the right of that shot there. Do we have any action on Alcatraz? No, best type of military, you never have to use it. They were ready, as you can see, quite a few cannon. They called it a Ring of Fire all the way around Alcatraz and nobody ever ventured to make their way into San Francisco Bay. During the Civil War, we had concerns about the Confederacy coming into San Francisco and taking the gold that was being brought into town here. So Confederate sympathizers were brought to Alcatraz and imprisoned on the rock during the Civil War. There were plots to take over the harbor and wealthy businessman in San Francisco that sided with the Confederacy had purchased a ship with cannons and rifles on it and they were going to blockade the harbor until the Confederate Navy sailed around the horn and came into San Francisco Bay and the old saying loose lips sank ships and they were arrested and sent to Alcatraz Island. We have had several jail cells over the years. The first one was in the guard house, Sally Port entrance and it was a small room that grew to 600 jail cells that everybody sees today in the main prison building. This shot shows Hopi elders that were also incarcerated on Alcatraz. Native Americans were brought out to the island. Basically they didn't want to send their children to the boarding schools to wash the Indian out of them, quote unquote, and they were brought to Alcatraz and incarcerated because of that not wanting to send their children out to the island. So we get our start early on in the 1800s as a military penitentiary. The island was actually blown up in sections of the rock to create a sheer cliff so that you'd have to climb up the cliff while they were shooting at you. And this shot kind of shows the steep cliff there and also a new lighthouse that appears around the turn of the century. Structures like the officers club, this building was added also around the turn of the century. A lot of concrete structures came out to the island. At the turn of the century, the cannons were obsolete on Alcatraz and the army decides to give us a new mission, disciplinary barracks, Pacific branch, Alcatraz Island. 1907 we get that new mission. And so this was a structure that had a bowling alley in it, pool tables, and it was a social hall for the officers on Alcatraz that were working as correctional officers. So change of mission at the turn of the century and there's a nice shot of the bowling alley, just a two-lane bowling alley, but nonetheless it became a little city that the military had created. Another fascinating thing to me is the vegetation on Alcatraz. The soil was brought to the rock from Angel Island and they spread the dirt all around the rock and planted the trees and the rose gardens that you'll see out on the island today. It still exists. Now the military uses Alcatraz all the way till 1933 and when the Depression hit the country, that's when the army leaves the rock and it was up for grabs and another federal agency takes the island and turns it into a supermax penitentiary. So J. Edgar Hoover is quoted as saying, we're gonna take all the bad apples within the prison system and lock them up on the rock and let them rot out there. This shot shows the first federal prisoners arriving. This is Al Capone's train that arrives at the dock and the 50 prisoners that were on that train were also escorted by correctional officers with high-powered weapons, Tommy guns and for security, the train, the railroad cars were placed on a barge in Tiberon, California and towed to the dock of Alcatraz just to keep Al and these other prisoners on that train until they stepped off the dock of Alcatraz. The shot also just to the left of the train, you could see a guard tower. So these type of towers were introduced to the island and the feds changed the look by bringing in the barbed wire fences and it changes from a disciplinary barracks where you had soldiers that had broke in military law, maybe went AWOL or struck an officer, they weren't the bank robbers and murders that would show up in August in 1934 is when the feds take over. I always try to also throw out to the public that the main reason why we're on Alcatraz as a national park site, historic site is because of the military history. The 80 years that the United States Army occupies Alcatraz is the main focus and a reason why we are saved as a national park site. The Federal Bureau of Prisons occupied the island for 29 years and the park service has been there longer than it was a federal penitentiary. We took the island over 1972. The officers in this shot were hand picked. The correctional officers that were employed on the island only had about 100 officers to watch over the convicts and the guard ratio on Alcatraz was one officer for every three convicts. So that's a very high guard ratio compared to facilities today where you might have one to 100 but in Alcatraz it was one to three and the average population on Alcatraz for the federal prisoner was roughly 250 to 300 prisoners at one time. Classic shot of the dock tower and you'd have a man up in that tower with a 30 odd six rifle and a 45 handgun and Thompson submachine gun and basically his job is to monitor and make sure that no one's going to escape into the San Francisco Bay and if a vessel came too close within 200 yards that tower would open up and fire at the vessel. So they meant business on the rock. The structure on the left of the tower was housing for the correctional officers. So these were army barracks that were turned into apartments for the correctional officers and roughly we had about 75 to 100 children basically take the vessel from the dock just to the right of the guard tower is the Alcatraz boat, the Warden Johnson. It would take children to school every day and the family members could go to town and shop and maybe see a movie and then come back to their homes. So the apartment building that you see on that dock there was a nice place to live and we've talked with many of the correctional officers that have told us they never locked their doors in those apartments. They felt that safe out there that they knew where the Crooks were in their neighborhood up at the top of the hill. There's a shot of the tower weapons again the Thompson submachine gun and high-powered rifle there, a couple of the vehicles. People are surprised about the trucks that we still have on the island. Those two panel trucks would have been used to transport the convicts up to the penitentiary. One of those vehicles was known as the Black Mariah. I've got a 1934 fire engine on Alcatraz, a diamond tee fire engine that we've restored and we drive that around the island. People love the old vehicles. I've also got an old Chevy pickup truck that same type of trucks that they used on the island. There's the diamond tee and this is still a functioning fire engine. It's the oldest fire engine in the National Park system that is still a functioning fire engine. So we get firefighters that asked just to see the fire engine. Nice shot of Broadway looking down the main corridor and the correctional officer there in that shot. For a while they wore badges but then they got rid of the badges. They had a blazer for a uniform and they were professionals. They dealt with the convicts professionally. It wasn't, hi Dave, how you doing? It was very strict. They weren't even allowed to talk the convicts so they kept these people under control at least for the first few years. The convicts were not allowed to talk. The cells basically are the size of a pool table. It's a five by nine cell. So that's a regulation pool table. Five feet across, nine feet long, seven feet tall. And you spend maybe 23 hours a day in a jail cell on Elcatraz Island. It's your home basically. You can see some artwork in the back of the cell there and they were allowed to have painting supplies and also instruments in their cells there to occupy their time. But a convict that arrived on Elcatraz would have been given four rights. Shelter, food, the best food in the system. It was not uncommon to have a steak dinner once a week out there. Fresh fish out of the bay. And the idea was to keep these folks happy through their stomach and they wouldn't be complaining about the food on Elcatraz. Nice shot of the correctional officer opening up the doors and when those doors open and close, they have a nice sound effect. Some call it the slammer. And when you hear that door close behind you, it makes you, it's a reminder basically to the cons that we've got you and there's no escape. Great shot of the convicts coming back from say lunch and they would be transported three or they would make their way I should say to the mess hall three times a day and dine in that mess hall. About 20 minutes to eat your meal and then back to your cell. Got a nice playground for the men on the island and this shot actually shows them lined up to go to work. So at the north end of Elcatraz was a factory building where the convicts did the military's laundry. So they would line up out in the rec yard and then march out to their workstations at the north end. Penitentiary building, this shot here shows you the prison building. It was the largest concrete structure on the west coast when it was built in 1912. And in this rec yard, we've got shuffleboards and this shot you can see there are bleachers where the cons could sit on the steps and just look out at the San Francisco Bay. So often the distance that's Mount Tamapias and Sausalito just to the left of Mount Tam. And great shot of the island. It's a small island again 22 acre rock. The north end is what you see on the right side of the shot here. That's the original industries building that hung on the cliff of the island. And they had a lot of problems when the convicts would go out to that building, working in that factory of escape attempts. People would pop out the back window of that building and hit the water and take off swimming. In 1938, they had a major breakout in that structure where three convicts jumped a correctional officer in the factory building and hit him in the head with a hammer, kill the officer outright. And they climbed up onto the roof of the factory on that edge of the rock there. And there was a bridge that connected to the wreckyard wall and the plan was to take the weapons from the guard tower up on the roof and shoot their way down to the dock. The officer stopped him up on the roof and ended their escape attempt. And the Federal Bureau of Prisons basically built a new factory building for the convicts to work. And that's the elongated building just in front of the old factory. And they moved the operations across the street and the military's laundry in the Bay Area was sent to Alcatraz along with the post office in San Francisco sent their dirty laundry out to Alcatraz. And the whole second floor of the industries building was used as a laundry during World War II. The water tank, I think you can see it just to the left of the wreckyard there was filled every few days. And fresh water had to be brought in to Alcatraz. The island did not have any fresh water. The military learns when they arrived drilling down into the rock 200 feet to come up with a fresh water system. And they came up with saltwater. So they had to transport water out to Alcatraz and or during a Civil War collect rainwater. Nice shot again of the factory building and there you have an officer with a high powered weapon looking down on the factories at the north end. You can also see the bridge system that I was just speaking of where the convicts were gonna escape from the roof of that factory building at the far end of the island. Inside the industries basically they had construction of desks and chairs and gloves were produced for the federal government along with the Laundria course. Netting for the Navy, a variety of jobs. There's a con with some canvas gloves that they produced on the island. So seven cents an hour is what they would have paid a convict to work on Alcatraz. You couldn't spend the money on Alcatraz. It went into a bank account once you were released from prison you could access that bank account. After 10 years that seven cents adds up. Trousers were produced out there on the island. Some folks worked in the kitchen. Others worked out in the gardens of Alcatraz but the majority worked out at the north end of the factory. This is a shot of the miss hall and some called it the gas chamber. If you look up on the beam and this photo here to the left of the room there you can see a tear gas can and this could have been a volatile situation to have 200 convicts eating in this mess hall there. So the tear gas was a backup basically if there was a fight or a riot situation the officers could hit the button and the tear gas would drop down. Religious services were held once a week on the island. So this is a nice shot of the chapel and also you can see a screen behind the altar there. So twice a month they showed movies for the federal prisoners. Shirley Temple was a big favorite for the federal convicts during the 30s. They were family movies that they were showing Disney movies that sort of thing and that was a perk to be able to go to the theater chapel. Machine Gun Kelly we've been told was an altar boy and a projectionist on the island. They had a jazz band in the 30s. Al Capone actually wrote some music while he was out on the island and he played tenor banjo in the jazz band. Another shot of a baseball game going on out in the rec yard. So again this was on the weekends that they'd be allowed to go out into the rec yard. Gambling was not allowed but they could use dominoes and some say they dabble a little bit with gambling out there. Machine Gun Kelly is in this shot. The man without the hat is George Kelly. Another shot of the rec yard. The Gardens of Alcatraz as I mentioned we've got historic gardens out there dating back to the Victorian era when the military post introduces the gardens. So who continued to work in the gardens but the convicts and the warden's wife also had her gardens right out past her house. That nice shot to show the tiered gardens and a beautiful lawn out there and this was all watered with the shower. They reused the water from the shower facility in the prison building. I love that shot from a guard tower looking down on the gardens and you can see the bay bridge off in the distance. There again is that bridge that the officers could patrol and keep an eye on the prisoners down below. Alcatraz originally was built as a military disciplinary barracks in 1912, this building that we're looking at and one of the main reasons for closing Alcatraz was the foundation. This is the interior or the basement level of the penitentiary and there were some major problems with that foundation. This actually was also used, I gotta throw in as a dungeon during the federal system. They placed people down below the cell house into small rooms and they didn't have a light system down in that basement so it could be pretty pitch dark. In 1940, the federal bureau of prisons decides to build a new treatment unit so this shot here shows the solitary confinement that most people see on the tour but at one point they were using the basement. These cells are freezer style doors that can be soundproof and talking with some of the officers in the convicts, evidently these cells were kept dark. It's illegal to have a dark cell but evidently there were some power problems with these cells. Once you close that solid door, it could be soundproof but also dark in those cells. Shot of one of the escape attempt heads. This is a dummy head that was used during a breakout in 1962 and Clint Eastwood did the famous escape from Alcatraz movie. A lot of people have seen that over the years of wonder, did they make it? And you can see this is a historic shot of the cell. What they did is they went underneath the sink. There was a vent that they opened up and it's disguised with the clothing hanging there but basically they opened up a small of air vent and drilled it out and climbed behind the cell and used the plumbing as a ladder to climb up on the rooftop. And three men made it out of the building and they are still wanted. Classic postcard. A lot of people get a kick out of this still. The island last till 1963 as a super max prison. It wasn't the escape attempts to close Alcatraz down. It was the operating costs. And Robert Kennedy had a report done on the island found out it was costing three times the amount to house somebody out on Alcatraz. So the last prisoners leave Alcatraz in 1963, March 21st, 1963. We have a photo exhibit out there right now. Life magazine photographer Lee Wiener actually came out to Alcatraz and filmed the closing of prison. We've got those photos on display in our industries building at the North End. So the island was up for sale and this is an artist's rendition of what some folks wanted to see. A peace center on Alcatraz Island. You've got the geodesic dome there and there were lots of ideas on what to do. Some wanted to see the birds get it. Others wanted to see a nudist colony on Alcatraz. But there was a discussion of also a hotel and a casino out there. And Mr. Hunt from Texas, Lamar Hunt was going to negotiate, was negotiating with the federal government to purchase the property. And a few years ago I actually talked with a GSA representative, General Services Administration was looking at selling the property and he said in 1966 the GSA appraised Alcatraz at $1 million. You could have purchased the whole island. And so that was big money back in 1966. We all know that nowadays you can't even buy a teardown for under a million dollars in San Francisco. So but you could have had that whole island. Native Americans in the area going to school in San Francisco hear about the proposal of Alcatraz and becoming a casino and they find an old treaty that states that Native Americans have rights to Alcatraz and they proposed an idea to have a cultural center on Alcatraz. Well the federal government said, well you're out of luck on that. That's an old treaty like a lot of treaties that we broke with the Native Americans. So they basically take the island and this is a shot of the early occupiers arriving at the dock about 80 college students arrive at the dock of Alcatraz. And one security officer there said welcome and they stayed for 19 months. You can see Indians welcome. The tag on the wall there. United Indian property. Custer had a coming red power. These are all slogans that we still have on Alcatraz. We haven't painted over these and we refer to them now as political messaging and we are actually restoring the graffiti on Alcatraz. Was the first gathering of the tribes. We had a huge population of Native Americans in the Bay Area that had been relocated off the res and settling in San Francisco and the United States government's plan was to terminate the Indian reservation system in the United States. And so these young college students arrive and at one point we had upwards to 500 people living on Alcatraz. TPs were set up and only Native Americans were allowed on the island. The press came out and of course interviewed the Native Americans on the island. They even had their own flag on the guard tower. You can see there the broken piece pipe and my patch is in the shape of an Indian arrowhead with the white bison at the base of the patch and in the Lakota legend when the white buffalo come back all the people will be at peace. And so this was the first time where we had Native Americans from across the United States gather. So you had the Lakota and the Crow, the Chippewan, the Navajo and the Apache. They all came to Alcatraz and got media attention to what had happened to the Native Americans. They were killed off, placed on reservations and the final blow was to terminate those Indian reservations. And it worked. President Nixon sides with the American Indian and we have a leader Richard Oaks who was an amazing speaker. Here is Richard on the dock there. And the sad part of this story is that one of his family members dies in one of the apartments on Alcatraz. Young girl Yvonne Oaks, 12 years old, fell to her death. So this gentleman here, once he leaves the island, the occupation changes and there's a little bit of fighting of who's going to be in charge out there. The government officials came to the island and talked with the Native Americans and in discussion at one point they offered them Fort Mason as a cultural center and they turned Fort Mason down next to Fisherman's Wharf. But there was a student movement, it was a nonviolent movement and basically it lasts for 19 months. Restaurants from San Francisco sent food and supplies out to the Native American Indians on the island. And this tower, this is a historic shot but we have restored that political messaging on the tower. So when you come out to the island you'll actually see that and it's a great tool to talk about the Native Americans on the island. It ended basically with fires occurring on Alcatraz. Four buildings burn up mysteriously and this is a shot of the lighthouse quarters and the warden's house the next day after the fire. And when you've got a lighthouse out you've got a navigational hazard and that's when the federal police move in and take back Alcatraz from the Native Americans. But it worked. President Nixon apologizes to the American Indian for genocide and he preserved the reservation system forever. So it's a big part of the island's history. In fact, the Native Americans feel it's the most important history to Alcatraz, the gathering of the tribes. This is a recent shot of a sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz and we still have Native Americans coming out on Indigenous People's Day on Columbus and Thanksgiving Day. They used to call it un-thanksgiving and un-Columbus Day but a little more PC now with the Indigenous People's Day and we get about 5,000 people on those holidays coming out to gather on Alcatraz. Early shot of some of the original rangers, they were young folks that were creative and did the programs on the island and classic Smokey the Bear outfits. This actually is a former Alcatraz convict, Frank Hadfield, that was hired by the National Park Service to give tours. He was told not to tell the visitors that he was a former convict but the word got out that there was a former con giving tours on Alcatraz. And our mission has been to interpret the island's history and this is a recent staff shot of the rangers on the island and we're responsible for protecting the resources and interpreting the island's history and as I mentioned earlier, the layer is a history of Alcatraz from the military all the way up to the occupation in 1969. There's a lot to discuss out there and as I said earlier, we are restoring buildings. The fire engine that you see in this shot was restored about 15 years ago, 100,000 just to restore that fire engine and then there's the Chevy truck too next to her. So it's a fun job. I still look forward to going to work. I get to drive that fire engine around and people from all over the world are excited to see that island. The Fireboat Phoenix is our backup. If we've got fire, any fire needs out there, they'll hopefully respond. It's quite a production. We've got a tram system that transports people up to the penitentiary. Every half an hour we've got 300 people arriving on the island and the birds have always been there but since we are closing approximately half the island to the general public, we've got nesting birds in many of the closed areas and this is a Western gull with a young baby. They're kind of cute with the spots there and it's a bird rookery basically. You can see the birds in flight there. We're doing a little rescue in this shot of a bird that got caught in one of the fences on the island. Just off in the distance behind me there is the housing for or what's left of the housing for the correctional officers. The one sad thing is the government tore down the apartments after the Indian takeover and they left us with the rebel pile there and we are placing vegetation on top of that rebel pile and we've got trees starting to grow out of that rebel pile on the south end of the island. We've had prisoners working on the island. We still have folks coming out periodically to work and do restoration on the island and as I mentioned again our mission is to stabilize the buildings. This is one of the last guard towers on Alcatraz that was fully restored and the latest building, this structure here about three million went into this building. So little by little things are happening on the rock. The cell doors on Alcatraz were stabilized and restored by Southern Steel out of San Antonio, Texas and they donated about $400,000 worth of equipment to get the slammer working again and in the paper they got a little present and basically we put the slam back on the slammer. It was a big job to tear all those boxes open and repair the cells, the bars and the different parts that we're missing. This is a nice shot of the cliff stabilization. We've gun-ighted that rock so that lighthouse doesn't fall down. Also to the right of the lighthouse is what's left of the warden's house and you never know maybe that'll be restored someday. So little by little things are happening. Shot of the roof here, we actually installed solar panels on the roof and there's a shot from the lighthouse looking down on some of those panels and this was stimulus money that was used to bring in the solar to Alcatraz, $8 million worth of solar panels and batteries included with that $8 million there. There's the finished job there. You can see the water tower covered up. This was a couple years ago now but we restored that water tower and that's a shot from the water tower I took looking over on the penitentiary rooftop. There's a nice shot and there's the graffiti. We've actually restored that graffiti and it's a bright red paint once again, free Native Americans Indian land. And of course the windows, Russ never sleeps. This is the factory building where we replaced 7,000 windows and in this building this is where we have our art displays. A few years ago we had Weiwei, the Chinese artist's work was out there and we had to get permission from the State Department to actually have his artwork out there. I pushed some buttons. There were, what was it? No, I'm sorry, I think it was two million Legos laid out on the floor of this building and political prisoners portraits were produced out of these Legos. I guess Weiwei's son, you know, a young kid playing with Legos and he had a great idea. Let's do portraits and it, most of the folks I'd never heard of but you could read about these political prisoners. A lot of folks from Asia but there were a few folks that I recognized in the portraits. Martin Luther King was next to Edward Snowden. Chelsea Manning next to Nelson Mandela and a lot of people question why would we want to have these folks on display there but who's to say how they're going to be perceived in the future? Beautiful shot from the industries looking out on the Golden Gate there and the lighting is just fantastic for artwork inside this building so I hope to see more light or more artwork I should say. Nice shot of some of the volunteers. That's how we run the parks. We've got volunteers working in the gardens, stabilizing the original gardens and as I said earlier it's an amazing island to visit just the beauty of the rock and there's some hand balls in her hand that were actually went over the wreckyard wall from the prisoners and with these folks working in the gardens there discovering artifacts out in the gardens. This is Officer's Row and you can see some beautiful vegetation there. So the island definitely is an amazing national park site and it's got so much to the island and the preservation work continues. We've even got a concrete preservation institute working on the island reproducing the concrete railings and these are college students that are learning about concrete material and we've got a lot of concrete that needs to be restored on the island so nice shot of the railings being restored and more and more of the island is being open. So former Deputy Chief of Police, Stan Cortes on top of the Alcatraz Light and he retired from SFPD and came to Alcatraz and worked as a volunteer for about 28 years on the island and he did the talks and he was one of my mentors on the island and we are always looking for folks to volunteer and to do the talks on the rock. It's an exciting place to talk with the general public and we have an alumni every year. This is a convict from Alcatraz on the left in this shot and the man to my right is Jim Albright. Bob Luke and Jim get along now but they were kind of on the other side of the fence back in the day. We have an alumni gathering coming up this August, August 13th, the Sunday this year we'll have the alumni coming back to Alcatraz to relay the stories of what it was like to be an officer out on the island. This woman here is Betty Lou Vickery and she was an Army brat and she came back for the alumni gathering and talked about the military's history and the man standing next to her was also a child when it was a military prison. And of course the press always wants to hear the convict's side of the story and Alcatraz definitely sells. We'll feed the alumni. We have had music over the years when the alumni come back they're entertained and fed and we got a nice shot of the prison band playing. This shot's kind of fun. This is the family members of the Anglins doing a press conference with the US Marshals and people are fascinated about escape attempts. Did anybody make it? And it's still up for debate. This press release did not have the cons show up. We thought maybe they'd come out of the woodwork but they didn't so. The three men that escaped in 1962 are still one of these are family members talking about their brothers, the two sisters of the Anglin brothers and I. Movie shoots we've had, well that's testament doing a rock and roll video on Alcatraz. A lot of heavy metal videos have been shot out there and here they are with the Marshall stacks and performing in the old mess hall so never a dull moment out there and Hollywood definitely has created an iconic place for people to come and visit. This is JJ Abrams TV show being filmed out there. There's been 12 movies shot on location and I really think that Hollywood influence has created an iconic place for people to come and see the island. There I am with some actors dressed up as correctional officers, comedians, George Lopez out on the island. There's Daryl Hanna signing my hat. I've got kind of a tradition to have celebrities autograph the inside of my hat so recently I got Jimmy Page and Johnny Depp to sign the hat so they all come out to the rock to see the layers of history and of course again the TV shows and here's a nice shot of the exhibit that we've got on Alcatraz right now. This is the last day of Alcatraz, the former convicts. Some of them are in this shot here looking at pictures of themselves leaving the rock and well there's a shot of the prison that's in pretty bad shape in this shot but I gotta tell you the park service has put $30 million into stabilizing this wall so it doesn't look like this anymore. Some of the wall has been replaced and it's a big job and the exterior walls were popping the concrete off so this now has been restored and it's been a hard day for that ranger there and that's the end of the little PowerPoint display here so I hope that you can all come out to the rock and learn about the island and see it personally there.