| Name | Missouri State Penitentiary |
| Address | 115 Lafayette StreetJefferson City, MO |
| Brief Description | Hear the fascinating history of life inside the walls of the Missouri State Penitentiary. Once home to inmates including 'Pretty Boy' Floyd and Sonny Liston, the MSP tour includes housing units, dungeon cells and the gas chamber. |
| Type | Attraction |
| Category | Tour |
| Description | Decommissioned in 2004, the Missouri State Penitentiary is now open to the public for hard hat tours. Before it closed, MSP was the oldest continually operating penitentiary west of the Mississippi. The prison was 100 years old when Alcatraz began taking inmates. When this prison opened in 1836, the Battle of the Alamo was going on in Texas and Andrew Jackson was in his second term. The tour showcases cells including those of famous inmates such as heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, who learned to box during his time in the big house, and James Earl Ray. Other stops on the tour are the gas chamber where 40 men and women were executed, the buried cells, several housing units and the upper yard. In 1967 the Missouri State Penitentiary was infamously named the "bloodiest 47 acres in America by Time magazine because of the incredibly high number of serious assaults on the grounds between 1963-1964. Public tours cost $12 per person. Call the Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau for available tour times. In 2011, the Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau will not only offer a two hour historic tour ($12) and a four hour in-depth tour ($35) of the MSP, but also will offer twilight tours, specialty history tours, photography tours, ghost hunt tours, ghost tours and paranormal investigations.
Twilight history tours, $17 per person, will include the same information as the regular history tour, but will be given in the evening; from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Participants will be given a lantern in order to navigate the prison at night.
Dozens of infamous inmates spent time in the Missouri State Penitentiary and many historic events took place within the walls. Specialty history tours will focus specifically on these people and events, including things like the 1954 Riot, Sonny Liston, MSP escape attempts, 'Pretty Boy' Floyd and executions. Specialty tours will be offered on special occasions and will cost $17.
One of the most requested type of tour is a ghost tour. The Bureau will offer twilight ghost tours that will tell of the history of MSP and the strange and unusual occurrences that have taken place there. Guests will be guided through several housing units and will hear about some of the spirits that are said to still live at MSP. Tickets are $25 per person.
Those who want to do more than simply hear about ghost stories will have the opportunity to partake in the ghost hunt tour. For $25, guests will be given a brief history lesson of the facility and will then have time to use activity finding devices in two of the housing units and the gas chamber. |
| Website | www.MissouriPenTours.com |
| Local Visitor Bureau | www.visitjeffersoncity.com |
| Last Updated | 6/28/2011 |
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