It was originally an underground copper mine that was located in Simsbury, Connecticut, but after the town was divided up in the past the mine found itself relocated to East Granby. From early reports the mine had several miles of tunnels that have since become flooded except for a few hundred feet. Today no one knows the full extent of the diggings, because of parts of the mine that aren’t even accessible to scuba divers. The mine produced the copper ore “chalcosite” and as discovered in the 1950s there is uranium ore associated with the mine.

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After the mine was no longer active as a copper mine the Connecticut Colonial Legislature was casting about for someplace to house some of their more hardened criminal like horse thieves, burglars, counterfeiters, murderers and others of that ilk. The old copper mine filled the bill perfectly for that job, so the property was bought for a new prison. In searching for a name for the place the colony decided they should name it “Newgate” after the infamous prison of the same name in London. What they actually created was a perfect “Hell on Earth.” that lasted until the 1820s. That was when the State of Connecticut built a new state prison in Wethersfield along Wethersfield Cove, an arm of the Connecticut River.

The first time I ever went to Old Newgate Prison was when it still was in private hands and operated as a tourist attraction. It was late on a Saturday afternoon; after paying my admission fee I went into the prison alone. I had just returned from the Korean War, and was still in an army uniform. The prison was on my way home from Bradley Field the airport serving the greater Hartford area.

Just inside the gate there was for some unknown reason a French tank left over from WW I, it was probably there as a further tourist attraction. I looked around at some of the surface works like the gallows, the blacksmith shop where they made nails, the dreaded treadmill where the prisoners were obliged to walk for endless hours as punishment for their transgressions and other surface manifestions of prison life in those days.