New Mexico Comes Up With New Tourist Ideas

That was real scary there in 1980!:

An unlikely answer, it turned out, lay in the department’s darkest chapter, behind the locked gates of the shuttered Penitentiary of New Mexico on the outskirts of this picturesque city, where one of the nation’s deadliest prison riots broke out on Feb. 2, 1980. In 36 hours, 33 inmates were killed and more than 200 were injured — some dismembered, others burned alive inside their cells. Fourteen corrections officers were held hostage and brutalized during the rampage.

The savagery — fueled by feuds that had long festered inside a prison built for 900 but housing 1,100 — raged unimpeded and led to fundamental changes to the way prisoners were classified, housed and disciplined in the state. Opening the prison to visitors and telling the story of the riot, Mr. Marcantel said, was a way to preserve that history.

“We thought, let’s open it up for tours,” Mr. Marcantel said from his office here, where a state seal carved in wood by an inmate decorates one wall.