Mount McGregor Correctional Facility was a medium security prison for male inmates in the Town of Moreau, Saratoga County, New York, United States. It was served by the Wilton, New York, post office and included 100 structures on over 1,000 acres. Before updating security, it was called "Camp Walkaway" due to the number of breakouts. [1] It became a prison in 1976, housing a maximum of 540 inmates, and eventually closed 38 years later, on July 26, 2014. [2]
The peak, Mount McGregor, was originally called "Palmertown Mountain", named after a local native tribe. It was renamed after Duncan McGregor, who purchased the land in a tax sale and constructed a small resort along with a restaurant for summer visitors. The Saratoga, Mount McGregor and Lake George Railroad later bought the property and opened a more sumptuous resort at the end of a rail line. When the Hotel Balmoral burned in 1897, the resort faded in popularity.
The "Sanatorium on the Mountain" at Mount McGregor was opened in 1913 by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company for the benefit of its employees suffering from tuberculosis. This sanatorium, fully staffed by doctors and a nursing staff, had a goal of restoring the health of all the company's employees. A labyrinth of underground passages still exist that were used to transport the bodies of patients who died to the church and crematorium. The sanitorium closed in 1945.
After World War II, the sanatorium served as a facility for military veterans returning to civilian life. Local stories suggest Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner looked into purchasing the property in the 1960s or early 1970s.
In 1960 the facility was taken over by the State of New York as a school for the developmentally disabled. At first the school was the Mount McGregor division of Rome State School and then became Wilton State School.
The New York State Department of Corrections assumed control in 1976. At first the complex was a minimum-security prison, later adding medium-security facilities. It consisted of 100 structures on over 1,000 acres, including dormitories, a 1915 Mission-style chapel with a pipe organ, a dining hall with large windows and panoramic views, newly-built gymnasium and medical building, and a lake. Administrative services, such as Reception or Commissary, were located on the lower level, in the tunnels connecting the buildings. The buildings covered 550,000 square feet and ranged in age from 1913 to 2007. The prison, which used only the central cluster of buildings, closed in 2014. [3]
Neighboring Moreau Lake State Park will incorporate 750 undeveloped acres of the former facility. In 2015, the state began considering proposals for the sale of an additional 325 acres, including all the buildings, for redevelopment. [3]
As of 2017, the prison has not been sold and the site is still closed to the public.
In 2022, Steve Brodt, founder of Haunted Nights, filed a proposal with the state's economic development arm to reimagine Mount McGregor. [4] He and his business partner, Mark Erskine, a real estate investor who lives outside Chicago, were reported to be preparing to submit a purchase offer to the state.
Brodt, of Glens Falls, wants to use the prison to host events similar to the tours that Haunted Nights conducts across the country: in a former county jail in Salem, an old asylum near Pittsburgh and a former mineral springs hotel on the Mississippi River.
Grant Cottage State Historic Site, where former U.S. president and army general Ulysses S. Grant spent the last six weeks of his life, was within the grounds of the correctional facility and visitors had to pass a checkpoint. Grant spent the last weeks of his life there, finishing his memoirs, the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant , just a few days before he died. The historic site is not part of the area to be sold. A fence prevented inmates from entering the grounds of the cottage.
Moreau is a town in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 16,202 at the 2020 census. The town is located in the northeast part of the county, north of Saratoga Springs. Moreau is named after Jean Victor Moreau, a French general, who visited the area just before the town was formed. The town contains a village called South Glens Falls.
Wilton is a town in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 17,361 at the 2020 census.
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York, United States. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Midtown Manhattan on the east bank of the Hudson River. It holds about 1,700 inmates and housed the execution chamber for the State of New York until the abolition of capital punishment in New York in 1977.
The United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth is a medium-security federal prison for male inmates in northeast Kansas. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. It also includes a satellite federal prison camp (FPC) for minimum-security male offenders.
Sullivan Correctional Facility is a New York State maximum security prison correctional facility for male prisoners located in Fallsburg, New York. It is operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. New York State announced its official closure date as November 6, 2024, with the inmates currently housed to be transferred to other facilities within New York State by that time.
A super-maximum security (supermax) or administrative maximum (ADX) prison is a "control-unit" prison, or a unit within prisons, which represents the most secure level of custody in the prison systems of certain countries.
Downstate Correctional Facility was a maximum-security prison in the Town of Fishkill in the Hudson Valley region of New York. It was located along the north side of Interstate 84, opening in 1979 and closing in 2022.
Collins Correctional Facility is a medium security prison in Collins, New York in the United States. The prison is located in the south part of Erie County in the Town of Collins. It is adjacent to the now-closed Gowanda Correctional Facility, another medium-security prison. Both prisons are located north of the Village of Gowanda, at the southern end of Erie County.
Arthur Kill Correctional Facility was a medium security correctional facility on Arthur Kill Road in Charleston, Staten Island, New York City. It operated from 1976 to 2011, run by what was then the New York State Department of Correctional Services. The prison had a capacity of 931 male inmates.
The Saratoga, Mount McGregor and Lake George Railroad was a railroad leading from North Broadway in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA, controlled by the financier Joseph William Drexel. The railroad ran for approximately 12 miles (19 km) through the towns of Saratoga Springs, Wilton, Moreau and Corinth to the top of Mount McGregor.
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (NYSDOCCS) is the department of the New York State government that administers the state prison and parole system, including 44 prisons funded by the state government.
The Adirondack Correctional Facility is a medium-security prison in Ray Brook, New York in the Adirondack Mountains between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid; it detains up to 566 people.
Camp Gabriels was a minimum security state prison, located in northern New York. This prison was located in the village of Gabriels in the Town of Brighton in Franklin County. The location of the former prison is inside the Adirondack Park on 'Forever Wild' Forest Preserve land. New York State Forest Preserve land is protected by Section 1 of Article 14 of the New York State Constitution. Camp Gabriels does not meet any of the exceptions to those provisions.
Grant Cottage State Historic Site is an Adirondack mountain cottage on the slope of Mount McGregor in the town of Moreau, New York. Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States, died of throat cancer at the cottage on July 23, 1885. The house was maintained as a shrine to U.S. Grant following his death by the Mount McGregor Memorial Association and a series of live-in caretakers. The building became a New York State Historic Site in 1957 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The Historic Site was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 2021.
Michigan State Prison or Jackson State Prison, which opened in 1839, was the first prison in Michigan. After 150 years, the prison was divided, starting in 1988, into four distinct prisons, still in Jackson: the Parnall Correctional Facility which is a minimum-security prison; the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility where prisoners can finish their general education; the Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance Center which is the common point of processing for all male state prisoners sentenced to any Michigan prison; and the Cooper Street Correctional Facility which is the common point for processing of all male state prisoners about to discharge, parole, or enter a community center or the camp program.
The Gowanda Correctional Facility was a medium-security prison for men located in Gowanda, New York, United States. The prison was located in the south part of Erie County in the Town of Collins. It was adjacent to the Collins Correctional Facility, another medium-security prison. Both prisons were located north of Village of Gowanda at the southern end of Erie County. It opened in 1994 and closed in 2021.
Coffee Creek Correctional Facility is a women's prison and prisoner intake center in Wilsonville, Oregon, United States. Operated by the Oregon Department of Corrections, the 1,684-bed facility opened in 2001 at a 108-acre (0.44 km2) campus. The selection of the location for the prison was controversial and included legal challenges. The minimum and medium security facility operates several programs designed to teach skills to inmates. Coffee Creek is the only women's prison in Oregon.
Mount McGregor is a mountain in Saratoga County, New York in the towns of Wilton, Moreau, and Corinth. It is one of the principal peaks of the Palmertown Range.
The Palmertown range is the most easterly of the five great mountain-chains which traverse the great wilderness. The Palmertown range begins on Lake Champlain, near Ticonderoga, and running down on both sides of Lake George, crosses the Hudson above Glen's Falls, and running through the town of Wilton, ends in the high ground of North Broadway, in Saratoga Springs.
The Detroit House of Correction (DeHoCo), opened in 1861, was owned and run by the City of Detroit but originally accepted prisoners from throughout the state including women. This was the first State operated prison for female felons. The state renovated the woman's division into the new Phoenix facility. The Detroit House of Correction was transferred to the state in 1986, renamed to Western Wayne Correctional Facility, and became a women's facility for the rest of its tenure. It closed in December 2004 and all inmates and staff were transferred to the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti.
Kinross Correctional Facility (KCF) is a Michigan prison for men. It is located in the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in Chippewa County on the south side of Kincheloe, adjacent to Chippewa County International Airport. The original facility closed in October 2015, with most of the inmates relocating to the formerly closed Hiawatha Correctional Facility. Upon the move, the Kinross Correctional Facility name was transferred to the reopened complex.
| Minimum security |
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| Medium security | |
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| Closed | |
Above facilities are male-only unless noted by ♀(female) or ♂♀ (unisex) | |
