ISLAND ATLAS

This atlas draws its facts from the National Archives, the National Park Service, the FBI, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The rotatable island model uses the NPS visitor map as an orientation reference. Terrain, architecture, paths and story anchors are interpretive and approximate, not surveyed geometry. The cellhouse is a schematic cutaway: repeated cells illustrate its tiered structure, not an exact cell inventory. Hospital and library markers indicate associated areas, not verified rooms or floors. The building study evokes the federal prison era; changing story years filters records, not architecture.

The National Archives at San Francisco holds Record Group 129: roughly 541 cubic feet of individual inmate case files, warden's notebook pages with mugshots for prisoners #1–900, administrative records, and photographs from Alcatraz's 29 years as a federal penitentiary (1934–63). Many records are subject to Freedom of Information Act privacy review.

All story panels include a sourced archival visual. Captions distinguish event photographs, inmate records, architectural documents and contextual views. Previews are reduced-size copies; the linked National Archives record or publication identifies the source. A contextual portrait identifies the person actually shown, rather than implying that it depicts a guard or warden.

NPS island map: model orientation reference ↗

• Former Alcatraz Inmates List — finding aid
• Record Group 129: Records of the Bureau of Prisons
• "Machine Gun" Kelly's Warden's Notebook page — NARA highlight
• Robert Stroud's Warden's Notebook page — catalog record
• Alcatraz National Register of Historic Places nomination — catalog record
• Prison Records at the National Archives — research guide