A rotating steel drum of pie-shaped prison cells inside a cylindrical cage. On each of three stories, there’s only one way in… one way out. This isn’t a saw-esque horror movie pitch, this is The Squirrel Cage Jail. Built in 1885 in Council Bluffs, IA, The Squirrel Cage Jail operated as county jail for 89 years. Its unique rotary design was built for efficiency, but safety hazards and public criticism forced the fire marshal to close the jail. In 1969, the last prisoner was escorted from the building.
Of only 18 rotary jails ever built in the U.S., 5 survived beyond 1939, and only 3 still stand today: A one-story jail in Gallatin, Missouri; a two-story jail in Crawfordsville, Indiana, which was the first rotary jail ever built and the only one that still turns today; and The Pottawattamie County Squirrel Cage Jail – the only 3-story rotary jail ever built. All three jails have been preserved as museums and the Squirrel Cage Jail is owned and operated by The Pottawattamie County Historical Society.
JOE SHEARER/THE DAILY NONPAREIL
Pottawattamie County Historical Society Vice President Jason LeMaster guides a tour of the the Squirrel Cage Jail.
During the years when it served as a prison, the jail housed men, women, and juveniles. It contained front offices as well as an apartment upstairs for the Jailer and the jailer’s family. Despite promises of efficiency and innovative architecture, The Squirrel Cage Jail and the few others like it were permanently closed. The jail sacrificed humanity for money and manpower, and the design flaws were impossible to overlook. Visitors to the jail can still see the names of prisoners scratched into the cell walls; if these walls could talk, what would they say?
The rotary jail has a design unparalleled in modern architecture. The Squirrel cage jail in Pottawattamie county is the only 3-story rotary jail ever built, and is truly one-of-a-kind. Sometimes referred to as a “lazy Susan,” “human rotary,” or of course, “squirrel cage” jail, the rotary jail is comprised of revolving pie-shaped cells nestled inside a cylindrical cage. To make the jail “escape proof,” the only way in or out of a cell is for the jailer to rotate the drum via hand crank until it aligns with a single access door on each level.
The rotary jail design was invented and patented by William H. Brown and Benjamin F. Haugh of Indianapolis, Indiana. The patent, issued on July 12, 1881, stated that, “The object of our invention is to produce a jail in which prisoners can be controlled without the necessity of a personal contact between them and the jailer.” The patent proposed a jail with “maximum security” but “minimum jailer attention.” The language of the patent reflected the general attitude toward the rotary jail design. As one deputy said, “If a jailer could count… and he had a trusty he could trust… he could control the jail.” With Brown and Haugh’s jail design, inmates had been reduced from prisoners to numbers.
Apart from the unique interior, the exterior of the jail was also a factor of interest. Architects Eckel and Mann designed the building very purposefully in a Victorian style, featuring detailed brickwork and Romanesque windows. The goal was to make the prison look less like an industrial eyesore and more like the home of any well-to-do Council Bluffs citizen. The comfortable, congenial exterior is a stark contrast to the cold metal interior, a literal and metaphorical façade for the troubles within.
No matter how you slice it, Rotary jails were hugely dangerous. The Squirrel Cage Jail was condemned for the first time in 1902, only 20 years after its construction. All in all, it was condemned roughly 2 dozen times. If an inmate’s arm or leg was caught in the bars of the cage as the cell block turned, the limb would break. The rotary mechanism of the revolving jail in Maryville, Missouri was welded shut only 12 years after its opening when a man’s head was crushed while the jail was turning.
Design flaws only added to the risk. The single access door on every level of the jail sparked concern around spreading fire, an oversight that could have been deadly for prisoners. The Pottawattamie jail in particular sat on a water table, which caused the building to shift. When this happened, the gears would fall out of balance and the jail would become increasingly difficult to rotate. Even though each cell had a toilet, prisoners could be trapped in their cells for as many as two to three days, being fed like animals through the bars of the cage. The last straw for the Squirrel Cage Jail came in 1960, when an inmate died of natural causes and a malfunction of the jail kept his body from being retrieved for two days.
If broken limbs and decomposing corpses weren’t enough, the conditions in the jail were subpar even when the rotary mechanism was working perfectly. It was dirty, loud, and echoey. If the inmates didn’t have head lice when they came to the jail, they did when they left. It was first built with no power, water, or heat, so it was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. In the winter, buckets of coal were used to heat the jail. Before police departments and child protective services were established, the Sheriff and his deputies would detain children whose parents died or committed a crime until someone else could take the child into their custody. The youngest child on record was three years old.
In 1910, the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors unanimously elected to request $75,000 from voters to build a new county jail. An unnamed editorial from the time is quoted as saying, “rotary cells of the present jail [are] not only a farce, they are dangerous to the lives of the prisoners.” Planning for the new jail went as far as to select a site near the courthouse, but the taxpayers were unwilling to fund the venture. Finally, after the rotting corpse incident of 1960, the rotary mechanism was disabled, and access was cut through the cage to the cells that could be reached from the floor. The jail was officially discontinued in 1969.
!["Rotary cells of the present jail [are] not only a farce, they are dangerous to the lives of the prisoners."](https://assets.website-files.com/613a41a3e5829be3deb834b0/61708a181a1db646dfacec3d_Ethical%20Dilemmas%20DESKTOP.png)
Aside from the unique nature of the jail itself, one historical event sets the Pottawatomie County Squirrel Cage Jail apart. In 1932, farmers in the Pottawatomie County area weren’t being paid enough to transport the grain, produce, and milk that they provided all the way into town. The farmers went on strike to leverage higher pay, which posed an obvious problem to the townsfolk.
The Sheriff at the time, Percy Lainson, spoke to another group of farmers who agreed to bring the food to town without a pay raise. Afraid their movement was losing momentum, the strikers turned to picketers, blocking roads to keep the new farmers from coming into town, knocking down trees and telephone poles, and guarding their posts with baseball bats.
Sheriff Lainson wasn’t having any of it. The Squirrel Cage Jail could only house 90 inmates comfortably, but Lainson rounded up 150-160 picketers and packed the jail full. He said, “If the Pottawattamie county jail bulges with picketers, it’ll just have to bulge, because I’m gonna fight it out if it takes 5,000 deputies.”
As word of the strike spread, so too did rumors of some 1,000 men marching to Council Bluffs to bust the farmers out of the jail. When Sheriff Lainson got word of these out-of-towners, he swore in 98 special deputies to bolster his forces. Lainson said that if the jail was mobbed, his men were armed and would handle it. The Daily Nonpareil ran a front-page warning to the citizens of Council Bluffs, telling them to stay at home, because the deputies were instructed to shoot to kill if anyone should try to take the jail.
Among the special deputies was a man named Claude Dail. On Thursday, August 25, 1932, before the out-of-towners could arrive and just three days after Dail was sworn in, a riot gun discharged. One deputy was injured, and Claude Dail became the only casualty of the mobbing at the Pottawattamie County Squirrel Cage Jail. After Dail’s accidental death, Mayor Myrtue met the out-of-town strikers to avoid any further violence. A few wealthy farmers posted bail for most of the inmates. The Sheriff would add 50 more deputies to his force as picketing continued, but the striking in Council Bluffs was over by the end of August.
Because of the Squirrel Cage Jail’s fraught history, it’s no surprise that some believe the jail is a hotbed for paranormal activity. There are five documented deaths in the building; one was Deputy Claude Dail, and the other four were inmates. Built on the site of the former city morgue, the jail-turned-museum houses many donated artifacts which may be charged with spiritual energy, such as old wedding dresses, military uniforms, and even scientific slides with eyeball slivers on them.
JOE SHEARER/THE DAILY NONPAREIL
Suzanne Tanner of Ghost Adventures inspects the Squirrel Cage Jail.
Paranormal investigators have searched the jail, and some employees have encounters of their own to share. Museum Guide Trudy Bino says she’s never seen anything but has heard plenty in her time at the museum. Among the most common supernatural noises are whispering, footsteps, shuffling, laughing, and music. There are also reports of objects being moved when no one is in the room and lights turning on and off.
The Nevermore Paranormal team says The Squirrel Cage Jail is home to both of two types of haunting: Residual and Intellectual. Residual hauntings are things like doors slamming, keys and handcuffs jingling, and clanking on the metal cell bars. The group has even documented two ghost cats at the museum which are known to brush up against visitors’ legs. Intellectual hauntings, on the other hand, involve voices. The group’s most memorable piece of voice evidence is a child remarking sarcastically of Council Bluffs, “Your city is wonderful, hahaha.”
Despite a storied past and a plethora of anecdotal evidence, there’s no way to really know if the jail is home to paranormal activity. However, there's no denying that the history of the Pottawattamie County Squirrel Cage Jail is nothing short of haunting.
Artwork and written content by Kate Doolittle.
Sources: The Pottawattamie County Historical Society, Accidentally Historic Podcast, The Council Bluffs Public Library, The Daily NonPareil, Iowa Public Radio