If the kids tell you that the house rules make them feel like their in prison, put the Old Idaho Penitentiary on your vacation stop.  No commission of a crime required, just stop by their location in Boise, Idaho. The Old Idaho Penitentiary State Historic Site was used as Idaho’s prison between 1870-1973. The prison was originally a single building, but the growing population brought a need for a growing prison, and several additional buildings were added, all surrounded by a high sandstone wall.  These additions to the prison complex were constructed with sandstone that the prisoners quarried and cut, back at a time when hard labor was a part of prison life. As happened at many prisons in the 1970’s, the over-crowded conditions led to a prison riot, occurring here in Boise both 1971 and again in 1973.  As […]