Color aerial photograph of Alcatraz Island in a blue bay, with buildings at the island's high point and a distant shoreline. — Open the full imageJPG, 1056 × 815 px, 0.1 MB

Aerial view of Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, California (Highsmith, Library of Congress)

Color aerial photograph of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay with the Marin shoreline behind it, dated by the Library of Congress between 1980 and 2006. Used as a view of the island only.

Date: 1980/2006
Kind: photograph
Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (Carol M. Highsmith Archive)
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: Library of Congress rights advisory: "No known restrictions on publication." Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; call number LC-HS503-1500, digital file LC-DIG-highsm-12761. This is not a federal work: it comes from a donated photographer's archive, and this archive relies on the Library's no-known-restrictions mark. The copy stored here is the Library's 1,056-pixel rendition.

The Library’s record dates the photograph “between 1980 and 2006” and notes that the title, date and keywords were provided by the photographer. It is a transparency digitized by the photographer, in the Selects series of the Highsmith Archive. The photograph shows the island from the air in color, with its buildings on the island’s high point.

It says nothing about the penitentiary years, which the Bureau of Prisons dates from 1934 to 21 March 1963 (BOP Alcatraz history). A federal aerial view of the same subject, dated 1986, is also filed.

itemAn aerial view of Alcatraz Island, 8 May 1986 (National Archives)Military aerial photograph of Alcatraz Island dated 8 May 1986, taken more than twenty years after the penitentiary closed. It is filed as a view of the island, not of the prison years.itemAlcatraz (Federal Bureau of Prisons history page)The Bureau of Prisons' history page on Alcatraz names Al Capone among the well-known criminals who did time there, and says most of its prisoners were not well-known gangsters.item"U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz: Federal Prison 1934-1963" (National Park Service, Alcatraz Island)National Park Service summary of the penitentiary years: the product of Attorney General Homer Cummings and Bureau Director Sanford Bates, with James A. Johnston as warden for fourteen years and a "concentration model" that later served as a blueprint for the high-security prison at Marion, Illinois.