A Feast Along the Alferd Packer Trail
From Provo, Utah, to Denver, Colorado.
Categories: Renegade Roads
By: Johnny D. Boggs 03/01/2008
Yet Packer got a break. Legal and legislative blundering forced the Colorado Supreme Court to overturn the verdict, and Packer was tried again, this time in Gunnison, where he was arraigned on July 31, 1886, on five charges of manslaughter. The cases were consolidated, and Packer didn’t help himself by cursing his enemies and his previous testimony. Found guilty of manslaughter, he was sentenced to 40 years of hard labor at the state pen in Cañon City.
Jailhouse Rock
At that prison, a guard racks his machine gun while I’m walking to the Museum of Colorado Prisons. Well, that’s what I heard, anyway. He didn’t take a shot at me, although he looked like he really wanted to.
The museum gives Packer a place of honor in one of 32 original cells transformed into exhibits. The Colorado Territorial Penitentiary opened in 1871, the museum (located in the women’s prison built in 1935) started in 1988, but this remains an active medium-security unit with some 800 guests of the state.
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