Back in March, Tony and I took a road trip to Rutland, Massachusetts to visit an abandoned prison camp located in Rutland State Park. Rutland is located west of Worcester, and we had never been there before. It's a very beautiful part of the state and I recommend visiting.
One small caveat, though. I don't recommend visiting when there's been a huge ice storm, like we did! A big nor'easter had hit the state the day before our trip, and while it brought only rain to Boston, Rutland had been hit with ice, which we didn't realize until after we were beyond Worcester. All the trees in Rutland were covered with glittering ice, making them very sparkly and captivating, but the two mile walk from the Rutland State Park parking lot to the prison camp was treacherously slippery. It took us a lot longer than we anticipated to walk to the camp. I have learned my lesson to check the local weather forecast before heading on a road trip!
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| Solitary confinement cells. |
According to the signs in the park, the prison was conceived in 1898 as a "temporary industrial camp for prisoners... to rehabilitate them for their return to society while reclaiming wasteland and abandoned property..." Four years later, a Rutland farm from the 1700s was repurposed and used as a kitchen, dining area, and housing for the camp. The inmates also built additional structures, and an abandoned schoolhouse was incorporated into the prison as well.
In 1905, a tuberculosis outbreak necessitated the construction of a hospital, which remained in use throughout the prison's history. The park's signage notes the following: "While most of the prisoners of the camp were minor offenders, some patient prisoners in later years were 'lifers' and murderers, so the hospital was a secure facility." The camp also had 150 acres of farmland which were used to raise livestock (including prize winning horses) and grow enough fruits and vegetables to feed the inmates. They even produced excess to sell locally. The fruits and vegetables were stored in an enormous underground root cellar, which still exists.
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| The entrance to the root cellar. |
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| Inside the root cellar. |
Sometimes in old movies, prisoners are shown breaking big rocks into little rocks. There is some truth to that, at least at the Rutland prison, which had a rock crushing plant that made concrete, gravel, and sand for road repairs. It sounds a little grim. The solitary confinement cells, the ruins of which are still standing, are also very small and grim. They're covered with colorful graffiti and don't have any bars on them now, but it was easy to imagine how dark and confining they would have been in the prison's heyday. We didn't visit the nearby cemetery of unmarked prisoner graves, but I think that sounds grim as well.
The prison camp was closed in 1934 because the land it stood on was part of the watershed of the newly created Quabbin Reservoir. There certainly is a lot of fresh water in Rutland State Park, including a giant beaver pond that we walked past on the way to the prison's ruins. We didn't see a beaver, but we did see some of their lodges.
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| Beaver pond with a beaver lodge. |
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| Just in case you don't know where you're going... |
I couldn't easily find any spooky legends associated with the prison camp. The blog Haunted New England mentions a legend that the ghost of the warden's wife still haunts the prison, but they couldn't find many other details. And in the comments on Abandoned Wonders, I found the following comment from 2019:
This place is incredibly haunted. Within the last 10 years, a group opened something in the tunnel area and called a non-human entity into the camp. Be advised! It followed me home and stuck around for about 3 months. Not fun.
Those were the only legends I could find about the camp. Overall, I found the prison camp interesting but not really spooky. We were the only people there for most of our visit, which was great, but also be aware that the area is isolated. As always, travel with a friend if you're wandering out in the woods, particularly to the ruins of an abandoned prison.
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| A view inside the root cellar. |
