The Contract Prison of the Skookum Chuck

In the session of 1877, the Territorial Legislature manifested considerable interest in a plan proposed by William Billings, the Sheriff of Thurston County, to take custody of all territorial prisoners in exchange for erecting a suitable facility near Olympia. The legislature accepted the proposal: Billings would be paid 70 cents per day for each prisoner kept, and he was entitled to all the convict labor. Billings associated with J. K. Smith, a former Sheriff of Pierce County, and Oliver Shead, proprietor of a mill on the Skookum Chuck, to form the Prison Company. The prison, completed in 1878, is surrounded by a stockade 12 feet high, built of two-inch thick plank spiked together so they cannot be sawed or cut. The main building is 150 feet long by 36 feet wide. The cells are made of boiler-plate iron, and each cell floor is made of iron, with the warden having a different key for every door. At the time of our visit, there were 36 prisoners—35 men and one woman. The male prisoners are employed in a blacksmith shop, the cook house, the wash house, and in building a tramway from the mouth of the coal mine to the Northern Pacific Railroad track. There are four Indians, three Chinamen, one Kanaka, and one half-breed; the rest are white. One Chinaman, afflicted with a loathsome disease, is kept in a separate hut in the stockade, where he experiences the pleasures of solitary confinement.