Museum Of Colorado Prisons

With 21 prisons in Colorado, 15 being in Fremont County, including a Supermax, Cañon City is the perfect town for a prison museum. A museum dedicated to prison life past and present sounds odd but it's well worth the visit. Very well done, very informative and very interesting. I would highly recommend.Notes: Not great for children under 8. Unfortunately children would find this museum boring as there's nothing to play with or on nor can they touch any artifacts. There is also sensitive information pertaining to inmates (like murder, rape, arson etc). "Viewer discretion advised".Depending on how much you like or want to read, you can tour this museum in 30-60 minutes.

Fun museum! Quaint, self led tour with a guide provided to you at check in. Tickets were pretty cheap and we used a great Groupon for them. Some of the information was understandably more graphic than others so with young kids I would recommend peeking in the rooms before you let them in to make sure they're not going to read something you don't want them to. Lots of posted printed information was present as well as lots of visuals and actual items or replicas of items relating to Colorado prisons. Real cute gift shop at the end with lots of neat things to buy. We were there over an hour and could have easily stayed longer if we didn't have other plans that day. I would recommend planning 1 to 2 hours to be there.

Really interesting and well curated. Not a major time commitment. Worth a stop. Also inexpensive.

I would have to say this place was very intriguing. I love everything about old jails and prisons. It is a must see if your in the corrections/law enforcement field.

Very detailed museum, with lots to see. Two stories of artifacts and info. Our favorite part was seeing all the weapons inmates made and the memorials to the Columbine and Flight 639. Also, just over the wall was an active mid security prison so we could see the armed tower guard and hear the inmates in the yard.

HA, this was a great find on our tour thru Southern Colorado! It was a cool walk thru the history of the Colorado prison system with lots of items on display in prison cells. The brochure handed out for the self guided tour, which gave lots of interesting information about each of the stations throughout our visit, helped immerse you into each topic displayed. Most interesting to me was that this museum is literally attached to the medium security prison, and the entrance was right below a watch tower - little creepy but added to the whole experience!!

This was a great visit and worth the hour-drive from Larkspur. Cañon City as a town was much more interesting than I thought, and this was a gem of a weird find. We had a tour with the elderly volunteer ex-teacher, and I HIGHLY recommend that! She was a true pleasure and a lot of fun. The exhibits here are varied and are still sensitive to the subjects, prisoners, guards, and administrators alike. It's a really cool building, and it will give you a very thoughtful understanding of all aspects of Colorado prisons, and prison life in general, from tattoos to famous residents to riots to prisoner artwork. It is also meant to be haunted, if that's the sort of thing you're into!

I love museums, but this one is probably one of my favorites because I love anything that has anything to do with crime... without being a criminal, of course. I liked seeing all the actual contrabands that were confiscated from the prisoners. I liked the art that were done by some of the inmates...some inmates were actually very talented...makes you wonder why they didn't use their skills and talents to impact the world in a positive way. If you like crime, history, art, and seeing old stuff...come here! I appreciated the fact that the musuem also honored the victims of some of Colorado's most notorious crimes...like the Columbine shooting victims.

I have to admit. We went here because my mom was visiting and was interested. It is attached to the old territorial prison and has a long history. Once you turn up 1st, you will see a small parking lot outside the museum building. You will also see a former gas chamber they used to execute those once on death row years ago. It is kinda creepy! Once in the museum you get to go in cells (decorated how inmates might have lived). They highlight former famous inmates, wardens and riots of past. You can see the old cafeteria, inmate art and see a type of history most of us know nothing about. I love history, so it was actually very interesting. It was an interesting place. I think it is worth the price of admission if you are in the area. It will give you a different perspective on prisons and how is housed there (and works there).

I liked this museum! It's in a former women's prison, and each section is in its own cell, which I thought was very clever. I thought it was chock full of information and interesting artifacts. They had a huge amount of artwork by prisoners, which I found equally fascinating and bone chilling. As a true crime fan, I was hoping for some more exhibits on crimes committed by inmates. Don't get me wrong, there were several very engaging exhibits about past and present inmates crimes; those were the cells I spent the most amount of time in! Let's just say I skipped over the cell exhibit about former wardens and lingered in the death penalty cell. One big highlight was the actual gas chamber they used to use! Chilling to walk around. Only critique is that some of the design could be cleaner. A lot of information was just on printed paper mounted on foam core, which for the most part was fine. I spotted quite a few typos, which I feel like they should edit as they find them. They also had quite a few newspaper articles that looked like they had just been copy and pasted, and I would've liked clearer headlines and bylines regarding those. Sometimes they had a second page but the second page wasn't obvious to find. All I'm saying is that a little more care and effort could go into the labels to make them more efficient and clear. All in all a great time! Well worth it for the price, I would bring visitors here for sure.