1870 Territorial Prison Museum in Boise
2445 Old Penitentiary Road, Boise, ID 83712
Age
All Ages for daytime; minimum age applies for evening paranormal events
Cost
$$
Self-guided admission $8 adults, $6 seniors, $5 children 6-12. Guided tours add $2. Special events priced separately.
Access
Limited Access
Historic prison with stone steps, uneven yards, and cellblock interiors
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1870 · Idaho Territorial Prison (1872-1890) · Idaho State Penitentiary (1890-1973) · One of Four U.S. Territorial Prisons Open to the Public · Idaho State Historical Society Museum
Construction on the Idaho Territorial Prison began in 1870 on a tract of land east of Boise at the foot of Table Rock. The facility received its first inmates in 1872. The prison's distinctive sandstone walls were quarried from the immediately adjacent rock face, and the architectural complex grew incrementally through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
With Idaho's admission to statehood in 1890, the institution became the Idaho State Penitentiary. Over the 101 years of operation, the prison held more than 13,000 inmates. Population peaked in the early twentieth century. Records confirm that more than 200 women were incarcerated at the facility and that some inmates were children as young as ten and eleven years old.
The prison was a working penitentiary, with cellblocks, a hospital, a women's ward, solitary confinement cells (commonly called Siberia by inmates), a chapel, and gallows. Executions were carried out at the institution. A series of inmate riots beginning in 1971 left several cellblocks badly damaged, and the state closed the facility in 1973. Inmates were transferred to the new Idaho State Correctional Institution south of Boise.
The Idaho State Historical Society took over the property in 1974 and opened it to the public as a museum. The Old Pen is one of only four territorial-era prisons in the United States open to the public for tours. The grounds also house the J. Curtis Earl Memorial Exhibit of Arms and the Idaho Botanical Garden adjoins the property.
Sources
The Idaho State Historical Society maintains a paranormal-reports archive for the Old Pen, framing the accounts as cultural artifact rather than confirmed event. The most concentrated reports come from two areas of the prison.
The first is Siberia, the prison's solitary confinement block, where inmates were held in small windowless cells for extended periods. Visitor reports describe the sensation of being watched, intermittent cold pockets, and occasional accounts of being touched on the shoulder or arm.
The second is the Gallows Room in the maximum security cell house. Reports here focus on a sense of presence, unexplained shifts in air pressure, and the experience of fragmentary voices that read as conversation just below the threshold of intelligibility.
The Old Pen has been featured on Ghost Adventures, The Lowe Files, Travel Channel's Haunted Towns, and Destination Fear. Paranormal investigation groups have conducted overnight sessions; their reports include documented EMF anomalies, EVP captures from Siberia, and unexplained equipment malfunctions in the Death Row cellblock.
The Idaho State Historical Society's official position is that there is no conclusive evidence of supernatural activity but that many visitors and staff have credibly described phenomena they cannot account for. Seasonal Fright Nights programming explicitly engages with the prison's documented history and its reported paranormal vocabulary.
Media Appearances
Walk original cellblocks, the gallows, solitary confinement (the cells inmates called Siberia), and the prison yard of a working penitentiary that held inmates from 1872 to 1973. The Idaho State Historical Society operates the site as a museum.
Most days, the museum offers docent-led tours covering the prison's 1870 territorial origins, the 200-plus women incarcerated here, child inmates as young as ten and eleven, and the major events of the institution's operation through 1973.
Seasonal evening events including Fright Nights and All Ages Night offer access to the cellblocks after dark, with historical programming on documented incidents and visitor reports of unexplained sounds and presence in Siberia and the Gallows Room.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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