18 - Military Parade Ground

WAYSIDE LAYOUT: Cream colored, horizontally oriented panel with a dark banner running across the top. The banner reads “Golden Gate National Recreation Area” on the left and the National Park Service logo on the right. The panel has two columns, the first has text and an image in the background of the panel. The second column has three images, two next to each other with the third below them.  

FIRST COLUMN:  
 
TEXT: Military Parade Ground: Reshaping the island. Between 1873 and 1876, military prisoners cut into the islands gently sloping southern tip and created the plateau below. We now call the concrete slab the “Parade Ground.” The leveled area was used for a variety of purposes over the years: gun batteries, a military drill field, temporary cellhouses for the fort’s growing prisoner population, and even a playground for the children who lived on Alcatraz.  

DESCRIPTION: Background of the panel features a photograph of Alcatraz island from the mainland, before anything was built. It appears as a stony, barren mound in the middle of the bay. On the mainland, in the foreground, is a white building.  

CAPTION: When the U.S. Army surveyed Alcatraz in 1847, it was a stony mound, as it appears here. Take from the mainland in 1853, this is the earliest known photograph of the island.  

SECOND COLUMN:  

DESCRIPTION #1: Black and white photograph showing men resting on brick steps, with more men in the background doing construction work, pushing wheel barrows.  

CAPTION: Soldiers convicted of crimes and serving time on Alcatraz were put to work reshaping the island. They carved away the Rock’s natural contours with picks and shovels to permit construction of gun batteries and the parade ground.  

DESCRIPTION #2: Black and white photograph showing men in formation doing drills on the parade ground.  

CAPTION: Alcatraz’s military prison guards, pictured here, and army troops drilled on the parade ground.  

DESCRIPTION #3: A black and white aerial photograph of the entire island, showing the leveled parade ground and the other prison buildings on the island.  

CAPTION: The original 1870’s plan was to level most of the island, but the project began and ended with the parade ground.