Once home to states’ most infamous criminals, historic Kansas prison opening for tours

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Most people did their best to avoid this place for nearly 160 years. That’s about to change.

When the Kansas Department of Corrections opened a newly constructed Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas, in 2020 it meant the old, stone-walled prison building that housed inmates since the 1860s would be left empty and without purpose.

Instead of demolishing it, the Department of Corrections transferred control of the building to the Lansing Historical Society and Museum on Monday, paving the way for the historic prison to be opened for tours.

Visitors will have plenty to see in the buildings that have mostly been left in the condition they were in when the prison shut down. Hundreds of tiny cells on multiple floors sit with their barred doors open inviting tour goers to step inside. Paint peels from the walls, some covered in graffiti and the grunge accumulated from the men serving their time there. The access provides a strong visual reminder of the conditions put on people serving time in prison.

The prison’s walls also hold the stories of the people who were locked inside and those who walked out after working their shifts. People taking the tours will hear about the day to day routine of prison life lived by the majority of the inmates who served their time and were released from Lansing. They’ll also hear the stories of some of the facility’s more infamous residents. Several whose time there ended at the end of a gallows noose.

The prison tour is modeled off of a similar tour in Missouri. About a year ago, Kansas Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth Democrat, approached the Lansing Historical Society and Museum with the idea of preserving the prison by converting it into a tourist attraction, similar to the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City.

After months of discussions, on Aug. 1, 2024, the Kansas Department of Corrections and the Lansing Historical Society and Museum formalized their partnership by signing a memorandum of understanding, allowing the society to offer guided public tours of the historic Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing.

“The state had allocated $10 million to tear that beautiful building down,” said Debra Bates-Lamborn, president of the Lansing Historical Society and Museum who received the keys Monday from Gloria Geither, deputy secretary of facility management for the Department of Corrections. “Pittman was trying to find an alternative use for it and so he approached the Lansing Historical Society and Museum to see if we wouldn’t turn this into a tour, just like the Missouri State Penitentiary has in Jefferson City.”

Bates-Lamborn said she and another board member made the trip to Jefferson City to tour the Missouri State Penitentiary . “Afterwards I thought ours is a shoo-in and we’re so much better,” she said. “We need to recognize the fact that this is a tourist attraction that’s going to attract people from all over the state of Kansas, as well as the Midwest,” Bates-Lamborn said. “So we’re not thinking small, we’re thinking big, and we’re going to be working these attractions for the prison as the year goes by.”

Pittman arrived at the Lansing Correctional Facility on Monday in a vintage pickup truck, expressing his excitement about the long-awaited project. “Oh, my gosh, I am ecstatic,” he said. Pittman emphasized that creating a prison museum to tell the story of Lansing and Leavenworth has been a dream for nearly a decade. “We’re known for our prisons around here, and to see this 150-year-old facility finally open up is thrilling. There have been so many starts and stops to the whole project.”

“I guess it just takes sometimes leadership folks willing to work across the aisle, a little bit of putting your neck out on the line and, really just people getting together to, to make something great like this happen,” Pittman said. On Monday he toured Cell Block C, a segregated unit, with other dignitaries and members of the historical society after the keys were turned over.

Tours of the facility will be held on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and are scheduled to start on Friday, Sept. 13, and run until Oct. 26. The tours, which will last two hours, will be guided by the prison’s former wardens and corrections officers, who will lace the tour with stories of life inside the prison walls. Since the facility has no heat or electricity, the tours stop over the winter and will return next spring.

Tour goers are advised that the tour requires a lot of walking, the ability to navigate two flights of stairs as well as walking on uneven concrete. The prison tours are not handicapped accessible and visitors will need to sign a waiver before entering the prison. A three-hour tour designed for photographers is also available. Tickets can be purchased on the Lansing Historical Society and Museum website .

Established in 1859 by the Kansas Territorial Legislature and originally called Kansas State Penitentiary, the historic prison was renamed Lansing Correctional Facility in 1990. The facility closed in 2020. The closure marked the transition to the new, state-of-the-art Lansing Correctional Facility, which spans 418,000 square feet and took 21 months to build. The new facility was constructed behind the original penitentiary.

“The Kansas State Penitentiary was built, started in earnest in 1864 by inmates and those inmates lived in what they called a wooden stockade just to the east of the present day penitentiary and that place was called Greenfield because there was no Lansing, there was nothing here but farmland,” said Bates-Lamborn. It took the prisoners about three years to build the prison from limestone blocks quarried nearby. “The first prisoners that were admitted into the prison came in 1867,” she said.

For years, the prison carried out executions by hanging at the gallows, a site that visitors will not be able to access during tours. The wooden gallows have been removed from the prison grounds, are now disassembled, and are under the custody of the state.

Among the notable inmates executed at the prison were Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith, who were convicted for murdering four members of the Clutter family on November 15, 1959, in their home near Holcomb, Kansas. Their crimes were famously chronicled by writer Truman Capote in his book “In Cold Blood.” Capote along with his close friend and fellow writer Harper Lee visited the prison while doing research for the book. Hickock and Smith were executed at Lansing in April 1965, but they were not the last to be executed there.

“There was another duo, George Ronald York and James Douglas Latham, who went on a killing spree that were hung in June of 1965,” said Bates-Lamborn. “They were the last ones to be hung in the state of Kansas.”

Not every inmate incarcerated there met their end at the penitentiary. It was a place to keep the most dangerous criminals walled off from society and also a place to give some a chance to contemplate their crimes and maybe leave with a new lease on life. One special visitor to the prison made a point of respecting the humanity of the men locked up at Lansing.

On May 15, 1970, country music legend Johnny Cash performed for the inmates at the Lansing Correctional Facility. Cash at the time was a well-known advocate for prison reform.

“Johnny Cash has always said that audiences in prisons are the most enthusiastic audience he’s ever played to,” said Bates-Lamborn. “He performed a lot of his hit tunes as well as, you know, Folsom Prison Blues .” Black and white photographs in the nearby Lansing Historical Society and Museum show Cash, along with his wife and entourage, at the prison. The area where Cash performed, called the Chow Hall, will be on the tours.

Minutes after receiving the keys, Bates-Lamborn led a group of historical society volunteers, former prison employees, dignitaries and a few members of the media into the prison for a tour.

Lansing resident Tom Young, who grew up a few blocks from the prison, was on hand for the tour where he shared a photo of his grandfather from around 1930. His grandfather worked as a hoisting engineer operating a coal mine shaft at the prison. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather were hoisting engineers who managed the descent and ascent of inmates and coal in a mine 750 feet beneath the correctional facility.

Young, who said he’d been around the facility his whole life, recalled how it looked during the 1968 riots that rocked the prison. “In 1968, this Kansas Avenue right here was lined up with four abreast Kansas State Highway Patrol cars during the riots,” Young said. He also remembers playing basketball against inmates with his City League basketball team, noting that some of the inmates were skilled basketball players despite their criminal backgrounds. Young was also a hoist operator having recently retired from the family business, Young Sign Co.

The historical society is also planning an event, the 1st Annual Behind the Walls, a car show, which will take place inside the walls of the Kansas State Penitentiary on Sept. 28, 2024, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“We’re expecting the prison to open up to large crowds who want to know what went on inside those walls,” Bates-Lamborn said.

The historic Lansing Correctional Facility is located at 303 East Kansas Ave in Lansing, Kansas.