Visit Clifton Jail, Clifton, Arizona

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Clifton was founded in 1873, the year the Lesinsky brothers built a smelter in Clifton due to the close proximity to water. During the mining years before and after this, criminals were not sentenced to prison time, instead they were sentenced to work in the copper mines for a certain amount of time. This was an ideal way to deter criminals as well as increase the labor in the profitable copper mines. The only problem was that many of the sentenced workers would flee rather than finishing out their work sentence. The Lesinsky brothers decided a jail to house the workers was necessary.         In 1878 the Lesinsky brothers hired a local stone worker Margarito Varela. Varela worked his way through the cliff forging his way with a pickaxe, drill and blasting powder. Varela formed two rooms in the Cliff jail, the smaller held the more dangerous criminals the bigger cell was used for the more minor offenses. Each cell had a large heavy iron-barred cell door and a window to allow for fresh air, the windows did not look directly outside, they were instead connected to small tunnels that led to the outside.  Local legend will tell you that Margarito Varela was not only the builder of the jail, but he was also the first to occupant of the Cliff Jail. As the story goes after Varela received his pay; he went to celebrate at a local dance hall with some Snakehead Whisky. At some point in the night, he began to fire his gun in the air at the dance hall to try and get everyone’s attention to share that he was done building the jail. It just so happened that the owner of the dance hall was also a Deputy Sherriff and he arrested Varela and locked him up in his newly finished jail.           The Clifton Cliff Jail was used up until 1906 when a particularly bad flood hit Clifton and flooded the jail, leading to the occupants needing to be rescued and leaving the jail so full of sediment is was unusable. Over the nearly 3 decades that the Cliff Jail was in service it said that many of the Old West’s notorious bad guys spent time there and It is also said that no one ever managed to escape the infamous Cliff Jail. 

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