Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
The Allegheny County Workhouse and its prison barrel trade
1869
Blawnox, Pennsylvania
The county jail downtown was overflowing, so the legislature authorised a workhouse in 1866 and the first inmates arrived at Claremont, now Blawnox, in 1869. Almost everyone held here was serving a short sentence for a minor offence. They made oil barrels for the Pennsylvania petroleum trade, which paid most of the institution's bills until state law shut down prison labour for sale after 1897, and they worked an eleven hundred acre farm and orchard. It closed in 1971 after 102 years.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: historic site
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