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## The Cellhouse, the Route, the Evidence of What They Did
Walking the documented escape route today — in the portions of Alcatraz open to the public — produces a concrete sense of the physical work involved.
The cells themselves are small. The vent opening at the back, behind the sink, is not large; widening it enough to allow a person to pass through required months of sustained, hidden work. The utility corridor behind the cells is narrow, industrial — pipes and conduit running up and down in a space not designed for human passage. The climb to the top tier is documented in the structure; the unguarded level above where the workshop was established is accessible in the building’s current configuration.
The roof of the cellhouse is flat in the section above the main cell blocks, with low barriers at the edges. The kitchen vent pipe that the men descended from roof level to the ground is on the building’s exterior. Two twelve-foot barbed-wire fences stood between the building’s exterior and the northeastern shore of the island; both have since been modified as part of the site’s historic preservation, but photographs from 1962 show the security features that the men crossed.
The northeastern shore — the area near the power plant, which fell in a blind spot between the searchlight sweeps — is where Allen West said the men launched. The water there is black at night, the current complex, the Angel Island shore approximately 1.5 miles to the north.
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## The Investigators Who Kept Searching