OTR: Moundsville Pen

June 5, 2018

This is an installment in the Gazette’s summer series “On The Road.”

From the late 19th Century until the 1970s, Moundsville, WV hosted a state penitentiary. A visitor in 2018 will find it devoid of the inmates, guards, and sounds that were once commonplace here. A sensitive soul may pick up vibes of violence, confinement, and death that still linger. It’s basically a museum these days, and inmate art on the walls offers a glimpse of the harsh reality of the prison’s past.

Manson’s request for a transfer here was denied.

Across a dreary prison yard where inmates may have worked out, smoked cigarettes, and conversed furtively as guards watched their every move from gun turrets atop towers stands the Wagon Gate.

Simple exercise equipment, Wagon Gate, the last drop.

Hangings took place there until the 1950s and were open for the public to watch until 1931. On June 19th of that year a condemned man was accidentally decapitated by the noose around his neck. By the 1950s a wooden electric chair had replaced the noose at Moundsville.

Photos of convicts executed at Moundsville Prison cover the entire wall.

Nearly a hundred convicts were executed at Moundsville before capital punishment was banned in WV in the 1960s. Photos cover a wall in the prison today, with name, home county, and date of execution listed beneath haunting portraits of dead men walking.