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The definitive short book on the infamous Yuma Territorial Prison is the 1962 self published "The Hell Hole" by William and Milarde Brent.

According to them "Americans, Mexicans and Indians were about equally divided, with the edge going to the Americans. Yet practically all racial groups were represented - Negros, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Britishers, Irish, etc."

B.F. Hartlee "was the most noted guard of all the prison group. A hard-case character, he was completely without fear, and his cool nerve and superb skill with a rifle was unsurpassed."

This is Hartlee in an undated image of the prison's entrance or sally port.

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...