Wyoming Territorial Prison, Laramie: History, Ghosts and Visiting

On the west bank of the Big Laramie River, just outside town, a gray stone cellblock with red sandstone trim sits inside a big open park of restored buildings. This is the Wyoming Territorial Prison, built in 1872 when Wyoming was still a territory and now one of the oldest buildings in the state. For 30 years it held horse thieves, cattle rustlers, robbers and murderers, and for 18 months in the 1890s it held the most famous outlaw of them all, Butch Cassidy.

Today it is a state historic site, and it comes with one of Wyoming’s best-loved ghost stories: Julius Greenwald, prisoner No. 338, a cigar maker who killed his wife and died inside, and who staff say still makes himself known with the smell of cigar smoke in a building where nobody is allowed to smoke. Below we separate what the records say from what the stories say, and explain how to plan a visit.

History of the Wyoming Territorial Prison

The prison was built in 1872 as a federal penitentiary for Wyoming Territory and began taking prisoners in early 1873. The first cellblock was small, about 40 by 70 feet, behind a 12-foot wooden fence, and it was far from secure: in its first two years 11 of the 44 men sent there escaped. Convicts built the warden’s house in 1875. The prison swung between crowding in the late 1870s and near-emptiness in the 1880s, when at times it held as few as three men.

Life inside followed the Auburn system. Prisoners wore black and white stripes, were known by number rather than name, marched in lockstep and were not allowed to talk. Punishment was harsh. Cowboy State Daily tells the story of Kinch McKinney, a cattle rustler sent up in 1892 for eight years, who at different times was cuffed to his cell door for eight and then ten days, wore a ball and chain for months, spent 16 days in the dungeon after an escape and five days cuffed to the ceiling of a completely dark cell after another try. Prisoners assaulted guards with smuggled rocks and a barber’s razor, but no guard was killed.

In 1889 a second cellblock raised capacity to 150, and in 1890, when Wyoming became a state, the prison passed to state control. Its most famous inmate arrived in 1894: Robert LeRoy Parker, arrested in Lander for horse theft under the name George Cassidy. As prisoner No. 187 he served 18 months of a two-year sentence for grand larceny and was pardoned in 1896 for good behavior. It was the only prison that ever held Butch Cassidy.

In 1901 the remaining prisoners were moved to the new state penitentiary in Rawlins, now the Wyoming Frontier Prison. Two years later the Laramie buildings were handed to the University of Wyoming, which ran them as an agricultural experiment station for livestock breeding until 1989. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, restored, opened to the public in 1991 and made a state historic site in 2004.

Across its prison years roughly a thousand men passed through. Only two are known to have died inside: a leprosy patient who died of pneumonia, and the cigar maker at the center of the prison’s ghost story.

The ghosts of the Wyoming Territorial Prison

Julius Greenwald, prisoner No. 338

Julius Greenwald was a 38-year-old cigar maker from Poland who sold fine cheroots around the region. In 1897, on a sales trip to Evanston, he walked into a brothel, found his wife Jennie working there and shot her on the spot. On September 25, 1897 he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life at hard labor. Inside, he talked the warden into letting him keep making cigars, and he died of a heart attack a few years later; his body was sent to his sister in Utah. Tellings of the ghost story usually spell his name Greenwelch, but Cowboy State Daily, working from the prison’s records, gives it as Greenwald.

The story says he never left. Visitors and staff report the smell of cigar smoke, especially in the north wing where his cell stood, though smoking is banned on the site. During renovation work in the late 1980s, when his cell was among several removed, workmen said their hammers, saws and drills went missing or turned up in odd places, and local radio stories describe him leaning in a doorway for a split second before vanishing, or waking people who try to sleep in the building.

What the curator says

Renee Slider, curator of the state historic site and a member of the investigation team ParaFPI, told Cowboy State Daily in 2022 that visitors report footsteps, creaks and whistling when nobody is there, and that she has heard a woman’s laugh, almost like singing, with no one around. Noises are often reported from the second floor, which held the mess hall and the discipline area. She thinks the cigar smoke is the strongest sign and wonders whether Greenwald has unfinished business.

She is also careful. She told the paper she is not a firm believer, that the site may be haunted but she cannot confirm it, and that her team has found some things it can explain scientifically. That honest middle ground is a good way to approach the prison.

The figure behind the glass door

Slider has also described a night-vision video that appears to show a head-and-shoulders outline behind an open glass door upstairs, with nobody physically there. Travel Wyoming reports that a visiting Colorado ghost-hunting group saw an open equipment case close on its own. Neither has been independently examined, so treat them as investigators’ accounts.

Where to look

• The north wing: where Greenwald’s cell stood before the 1989 renovation, and where the cigar smoke is most often reported.
• The second floor: the old mess hall and discipline area, the source of footsteps and noises when the floor is empty.
• The dark cells: the harshest punishment cells, shown on the site’s lantern-lit Dark Cell Tours.
• The upstairs glass door: where the curator’s team says a night-vision camera caught an outline with no one there.

Visiting the Wyoming Territorial Prison

The prison is on Snowy Range Road on the west side of Laramie, a few minutes from Interstate 80. The 197-acre park includes the prison building, the Prison Industries Building, the Warden’s House and a horse barn with exhibits, plus a visitor center, gift shop, summer picnic area and a nature trail along the Big Laramie River. At the visitor center you can take on a convict identity and follow his story through the cells.

From May through September the site is open 9 AM to 4 PM daily; from October through April it opens 10 AM to 3 PM, Thursday to Saturday only. Last tickets are sold an hour before closing. Admission in 2026 is $9 for adults and seniors and $4.50 for ages 12 to 17, with children 11 and under free, and Wyoming State Parks annual day-use and lifetime veteran permits are honored. Guided tours, included with admission, usually run from late May to early September and last 60 to 90 minutes; self-guided visits take one to two hours.

The site has run lantern-lit Dark Cell Tours of its punishment cells and family-friendly ghost tours around Halloween; they sell out, so check the events calendar or the site’s Facebook page in early fall. Leashed pets are allowed on the grounds but not in the buildings. There are no public ghost hunts here; for a full after-dark investigation, Haunted Rooms runs ghost hunts at the Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins, the penitentiary that replaced this one.

• Visiting State historic site with self-guided visits; guided tours in summer
• Hours and season May to September 9 AM to 4 PM daily; October to April 10 AM to 3 PM, Thursday to Saturday
• Tickets Adults $9, ages 12 to 17 $4.50 (2026)
• Ghost hunting Not as a public program; the site has hosted seasonal ghost tours

Tips for your visit

• Pick up a convict identity card at the visitor center and find out what happened to your prisoner.
• Come on July 10, Statehood Day, when admission is free in the morning.
• Book any Dark Cell or Halloween tour as soon as dates appear; they fill quickly.
• Stand in the north wing for a minute and see whether you smell cigar smoke.
• Pair it with the Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins, about an hour and a half west on I-80, to see both of Wyoming’s historic prisons.

More haunted places nearby

• Wyoming Frontier Prison ghost hunt: our ghost hunts at the penitentiary that replaced this one
• Haunted places in Cheyenne: the Plains Hotel, St. Mark’s and the Atlas Theatre, 50 miles east
• Haunted hotels in Wyoming: where to spend the night
• Haunted places in Wyoming

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wyoming State Parks: Wyoming Territorial Prison
• Wikipedia: Wyoming Territorial Prison
• Cowboy State Daily: Wyoming's cigar-making prison poltergeist (2022)
• Travel Wyoming: Wyoming's infamous haunted prisons
• Y95 Country: Haunted 307, Wyoming Territorial Prison
• KOWB: 5 paranormal activity hotbeds in Laramie (2018)