What most people know about Alcatraz, the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay, centers on a daring 1962 escape by inmates Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin. The dramatic breakout, was later immortalized in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz, with Clint Eastwood portraying Morris, the plan's suspected mastermind.
But unexpectedly in recent days, Alcatraz — which closed as a prison the year after the escape and is now a popular tourist draw — is back in the news, thanks to President Trump ordering it to be rebuilt and reopened to house the country's "most ruthless and violent Offenders," he wrote Sunday on Truth Social.
"Alcatraz has a symbolic register, particularly for someone of Mr. Trump's generation," according to Dan Berger, a professor at the University of Washington, Bothell.
But Jolene Babyak, who lived on the island as a teenager when her father was an associate warden there, says Alcatraz was never a very practical penitentiary. It was expensive to operate — and being an island, it was difficult to resupply. Food and water had to be brought in from the mainland. Babyak, the author of several books on Alcatraz, says it cost three times more per prisoner than at other federal facilities of the day. For the amount of money spent "they used to say you could put a man in the Waldorf Astoria — today it would be Trump Tower," she says.
The origin story of the island's name is a complicated mix of language, a history that dates back to the first Europeans to explore the coast of California, and, a flock of seabirds. Before the island was known for the Birdman of Alcatraz, it was known for its birds.
Where did the word come from?
"English (language) got the term alcatraz from Spanish and/or Portuguese," says Jess Zafarris, the author of word etymology books including Words from Hell and the upcoming Useless Etymology. The word means pelican or diving bird and is thought to have been introduced from Arabic sometime after the Moors conquered the Iberian peninsula in 711 C.E., she says.
"One of the more likely theories is that it's from the Arabic al-ghattas, meaning 'the diver.' Alternatively, it could be from or influenced by a Portuguese word for a bucket on a water wheel, Zafarris says.
A Spanish naval officer, Juan Manuel de Ayala, led an expedition that first charted San Francisco Bay in 1775 (although another explorer, Gaspar de Portolá, is credited with being the first to sight it in 1769). In the chart produced by Ayala's cartographer, the island can be seen identified in the legend as "Isla de Alcatrazes" because it was said to be inhabited by many pelicans.
"There is a cool folk etymology twist, a linguistic swoop, you might say, in English that is pertinent to this discussion," Zafarris says. When English mariners in the 1600s adopted the Spanish word alcatraz, they believed it to be influenced by the Latin albus, meaning whiteness — thus the word for the white seabird, the albatross, she says.
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an albatross is considered a sign of good luck for sailors. When one of them kills the bird, it brings bad luck, becoming an "albatross around his neck."
"It is interesting that throughout its history, the connection between the English word albatross and the word Alcatraz has heavily impacted the perception of the prison," Zafarris says.
Because the federal penitentiary was so expensive and difficult to maintain, it "became figuratively an albatross on the system, much in the way that the Rime of the Ancient Mariner's albatross is a burden around his neck. And... reopening Alcatraz again could be once again an albatross or a burden on the federal budget," she says.
How has the word been used over time?
Long before it became the famous prison island, it was Fort Alcatraz, opened in 1858. The island offered a commanding view of the bay's entrance.
"It is a great spot to put military watchdogs on San Francisco Bay" to defend it from an attack by sea, says William Deverell, a historian at the University of Southern California.
"The U.S. had a series of islands and sort of garrisons … as part of the westward expansion," Berger explains. "So at the outset, Alcatraz was as far west as you could go within the United States."
By the early 1860s, the fort was being used as a camp for Confederate prisoners of war. Deverell says it was a long way to transport POWs, "particularly when you realize there's no railroad," adding that it might have been meant to signal "a sense of utter isolation and a kind of Civil War gulag."
Around 1910, Alcatraz was being used to house military prisoners, who built the island's iconic three-story cell house that still stands on the island today.
Later, when the U.S. government was building federal prisons for civilian inmates, it often looked to see if it could repurpose military forts that already had prison infrastructure, Berger says.
"It was a kind of sunk-cost operation to turn Alcatraz from a military prison into a civilian prison," he says.
In other words, a cost-saving measure. Or so it seemed at the time.
When Alcatraz was transferred to the federal Bureau of Prisons, "the cell bars were strengthened to better prevent escapes. The cells remained primitive and lacked privacy," according to the National Park Service.
The rocky island is tiny, just 22.5 square acres. So when the federal penitentiary there opened its cell doors in 1934, there wasn't much room to house inmates. On average over its 29-year operation, Alcatraz held just 260 prisoners – less than 1% of the total federal inmate population at the time. But as a "worst of the worst" facility, it was infamous. Mob boss Al Capone and gangster Whitey Bulger did time there, as did George "Machine Gun" Kelly.
Arguably more famous, though, were Morris and the Anglin brothers who used tools fashioned from spoons to painstakingly clear an opening in their cell walls, and on the night of June 11, 1962, climbing up pipes to reach the roof and eventually the water's edge. They used a raft fabricated from rain coats and braved the treacherous San Francisco Bay in an effort to escape. They were never seen again, according to the FBI.
Author Babyak lived on the island at the time of the infamous escape.
"Everybody was very shocked because of the elaborate scheme and because, of course, [Morris and the Anglins] went missing," she says.
Babyak says she doesn't think the three made it.
"Guys that escape take that personality with them, and they tend to be noticeable," she says. If they had gotten to shore, "they probably would have been picked up within about a week — two weeks at the most."
The following year, the prison was closed by order of then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. It was deemed too expensive and the just-completed maximum-security facility in Marion, Ill., provided a place to house the Alcatraz inmates more cheaply.
Why does the word matter today?
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump called Alcatraz – which has been a national park and museum that draws more than a million tourists each year – "a symbol of law and order."
But the University of Washington's Berger says it would cost tens of millions of dollars to bring Alcatraz up to federal standards for prisons — let alone expand it.
"Part of the reason why Alcatraz closed is that island prisons are very expensive," he says.
"The infrastructure was always a problem," Babyak says. "Water is a problem… [and] all of the sewage… was dumped in the bay."
"The island was always falling apart structurally — and still is," she says.
Deverell says that the idea of reopening Alcatraz — while unlikely — serves Trump as potent political messaging.
"It's a way to showcase a kind of tough on crime stature. It's a way to suggest authority over California. And it's a way to express a kind of disdain for the National Park Service, I think," he says. "Altogether, it's like a trifecta of distraction news."
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