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Peg Price | all galleries >> Galleries >> Historic Tucson > Mt. Lemmon Highway Prisoner Camp
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15 June 2004 Peg Price

Mt. Lemmon Highway Prisoner Camp

Mt. Lemmon Highway north of Tucson

The building of Mt. Lemmon Highway began in 1933. Labor for its construction came from prisoners in a "Federal Honor Camp". This photo shows what remains of the employees housing they constructed during this time.
The prisoners were men who had broken tax laws or immigration laws; objected to joining the military in WWII for moral and religious reasons; and those who objected to the internment of Japanese-Americans.
Gordon Hirabayashi was one of the internment objectors who was imprisoned here and the site bears his name.


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Peg Price07-Oct-2007 21:04
Hi Judson,
How interesting to hear what it was like growing in the camp. Having those hills for your personal playground must have been such great fun!
Thanks so much for sharing your story with us all.
Peg
J.B. Jones 07-Oct-2007 16:05
Great Picture, I lived here when I was in grade school. My dad worked for the prison system for twenty years and this was one of the most memorable places for me as a child. We lived in the upper camp of staff housing. We rode a little school bus down the mountain every day. I can remember being bat boy for the inmates as they were allowed to play ball in Tuscon on weekends, I think it was against city leagues. We lived in the very last house at the top of upper camp and the mountains were our playground. I think they closed the prison around '64 and we moved to Florida. My mom has lots of pictures of the houses that we lived in. They were well built, rock outside, pine walls and floors inside, and big fire places. In the hills around us there were old mine shafts, caves, abandoned munition bunkers, just endless things to do as a kid. Amazing none of us were hurt. I have a friend who him and his wife rode scooters into this area a few years back and he sent me some photos of the old lower camp area, the house foundations and some steps can be seen. Maybe some day I'll vacation back that way and see it first hand. Thanks again for the cool photo and information. Judson B. Jones, youngest son of Lonnie M. Jones.
Peg Price20-Apr-2007 23:54
Thank you, Jim, for providing this information about Gordon Hirabayashi and the Mt. Lemmon camp. I've corrected my description of Mr. Hirabayashi as a Tucsonan.
Peg
Jim Creechan 20-Apr-2007 23:46
My wife and I enjoyed these great photos of Tucson. Her relocated to Tucson in the mid 1950's from Canada, and has a 50 year connection to Tucson. Her family graduated from the U of A, and I eventually earned a Ph.D. there. My son continued the tradition and earned his BA.

I'm writing about the caption of the Prisoner Camp.

Gordon Hirabayashi was not from the Old Pueblo...he grew up in the Seattle area and was a sociology student at the University of Washington when WWII broke out. A curfew was placed on all Japanese, and Gordon intentionally violated this curfew to challenge it. When he was sent to Mt. Lemon, he was one of the camp cooks. His challenge to the curfew law made it to the Supreme Court where a ruling went against him and justified the selective curfew against Japanese citizens. Being a very persistent man, he continued a lifelong legal protest and eventually the was re-opened by the US Supreme Court where he was vindicated with a unanimous vote to overturn the original arrest.

He is considered a true hero in the Japanese community — one of three people of his generation who continued to fight for vindication. I understand that there is a building named after him at the University of Washington. He was a lifelong friend of I. Roger Yoshino Ph.D. — also a sociologist from the U of Washington, and professor of mine at the U of Az. sociology department in the 1970's.

I know Gordon Hirabayashi well and have always respected his personal kindness and humanity. I taught with him for many years at the University of Alberta. Gordon is still alive in Edmonton, Alberta but burdened with Alzheimer's. He spoke to me often of his time in the prisoner camp and always remembered the beauty of this spot.
Peg Price15-Apr-2007 00:13
Thanks, Don, for sharing your personal experiences and memories of Mt. Lemmon.
It makes it very special to hear stories from folks like yourself who lived here and experienced Tucson firsthand.
I wonder where Black Mariah is today?
Peg
Don Stowell 14-Apr-2007 14:07
While a student at Roskruge Junior High School in the 1950s, one of my best friends was Larry Thomas whose father, Joe Thomas was Warden of the Federal Prison Camp on Mount Lemmon. I would often join Larry for a Friday after school ride in the Black Mariah, a 1950’s Chevrolet panel truck with bench seats in the back that carried the children of the employees to and from Tucson for school daily. We would head up the mountain to enjoy the beautiful outdoors of the Catalina Mountains. Hiking, often for a day or more into the unexplored mountains was big adventure for two teenagers.
The prison employees lived in rock, two story houses that were quite comfortable. The prisoners were in a barrack. The prison had no wall or guard towers. It was an honor camp.
The inmates were used to maintain the various recreation areas on the mountain and construct improvements. They were not considered dangerous or violent.
I recall one weekend when Larry and I were invited to join in “the chase” when one of the Mexican prisoners decided to head home. The trackers generally knew exactly where the path to Mexico was, along the side of the Catalina Mountains to the Rincon Mountains, then straight south. A very rough walk from which the prisoners often surrendered, exhausted, on their own. There were certain roads the trackers used to “chase”. The car would drive down the dirt road at a fairly good clip, suddenly the tracker .would holler, “STOP”. They would get out and check boot prints as the inmates were only provided with boots having a heel with a distinct dome-shaped mark. If the prints were the prisoner we would head south to another east-west dirt road and repeat the process. There was no urgency to the chase but the trackers were pros.