The most popular bars in Moundsville

By Bob Greene

CHARLESTON, W. Va. - The West Virginia economy is always rugged, there are pockets of the bleakest poverty all over the state, and - as beautiful as the countryside can be - tourists from around the world seldom consider coming here.

So what are local communities supposed to do to draw visitors?

Look in the tourist guides for one odd answer.

"Do Hard Time!" the advertisement invites. "Tour the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville! Experience What It Was Like to Spend 22 Hours of the Day Locked Down. Find Out What It Was Like to Do Hard Time at the Pen. $5 per person."

Moundsville, down the long road from here, is a town of 15,000 people. "We have no mall in town," said Sam Kandis, 59, treasurer of the Moundsville Economic Development Council. "In fact, Moundsville has not too much going for it. Anyone who comes into town asks two questions: 'Where's a good restaurant?' and 'What is there to do?' For that second question, we had the prison just sitting there."

The maximum-security penitentiary was built in 1866, and in 1988 was ordered closed by the state's Supreme Court because of deplorable living conditions. It sits right in the middle of Moundsville; Kandis, who lives across the street from it, said: "It's just there. There's nothing you can do to change it. I wouldn't call it ugly. It's like you had an old castle in your town."

Moundsville needed visitors and money. The penitentiary was right there, empty. So ...

"We decided to try to make it a tourist attraction," Kandis said. "Anything is worth a try."

He said that about 100 people a day pay the $5 to tour the empty prison. An effort is made to make them feel as if they are prisoners: "We have a pretty good little presentation." When the steel doors close behind the visitors, he said, the tour guides say: "You belong to me."

No one has to go into the individual cells, but those who do choose to do so, when they hear the cell doors close, "get kind of a sick feeling. I've done it - you feel kind of helpless. You'd need a blowtorch to get out of there if the cell doors stuck. I do not think I'd care to do 40 years in there."

As for other attractions ...

"Some people don't particularly like this, but we set up the place where they hanged the prisoners ... well, they electrocuted them, but they hanged them first. I'm not saying that they hanged them and then they electrocuted them, I'm saying that for years West Virginia hanged prisoners, and then switched to electrocutions.

"Anyway, we put a dummy in the place where they used to hang prisoners, and the dummy getting hanged is part of the tour. Some people who had relatives who were actually hanged at the penitentiary weren't too happy about that."

Visitors are allowed to look at the electric chair, but not sit in it. Is this because there is something distasteful about selling tickets to sit in an electric chair?

"No," Kandis said. "It's just that the chair is old and made of wood, and we're afraid so many people would sit in it and have their pictures taken that it would break."

Who comes to the prison for tours? Who wants to pay money to feel like a prisoner?

"All kinds of people," Kandis said. "Children under 6 get in free. Some tourists have spent time in the prison - they were inmates here before it closed down. They'll come back and point out different parts of the prison to their friends and family members. They were prisoners here, and now they pay $5 to get back in. Like it's their alma mater."

There is a gift shop: "pocket knives with a picture of the prison, tin mugs like the prisoners used to drink out of, T-shirts, two kinds of hats."

There has been talk of setting up a restaurant serving prison food, but the funds for that are not there. One evening, as a promotional event, a "Battle of the Bands" featuring local musical groups was held inside the prison: "You could listen to the bands for free, but you had to buy a ticket for the prison tour." An association of physicians talked about holding its annual convention inside the prison, but ended up going somewhere else.

Kandis said that above the main gate of the prison is the state seal of West Virginia. There is a Latin motto which, he said, translates to:

"Mountaineers Are Always Free."

Chicago Tribune