Alcatraz Island Lighthouse and passed suitable acts in the years 1851 and 1852 to build seven lighthouses on the West Coast to guide navigation. The Baltimore firm of Gibbons and Kelly was awarded the contract to build seven lighthouses in California, at Alcatraz Island, Fort Point, Point Pinos, Point Loma, Farallon Island, and Humboldt Bay, and one at Cape Disappointment in Washington State. Equipment were shipped on Oriole, reached San Francisco on January 29, 1853. The Alcatraz Lighthouse was the first to be completed in July 1853, making it the oldest major navigational light on the West Coast. However, the foundation for building
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary prisons in the country, especially the food, and many volunteered to come to Alcatraz. On December 3, 1940, Henri Young murdered fellow inmate Rufus McCain by running downstairs from the furniture shop to the tailor's shop where McCain worked and violently stabbing McCain in the neck; McCain died five hours later. Young had been sentenced to Alcatraz for murder in 1933, and was involved in an escape attempt at Alcatraz during which the famous gangster Doc Barker was shot to death. He spent nearly 22 months in solitary confinement as a result, but was eventually permitted to work in the