United States Federal Penitentiary

By a special act of Congress, the reservation for the U.S. Penitentiary was deeded by the War Department to the Justice Department in 1897 to build the United States Federal Penitentiary (USP) in Leavenworth, Kansas. The decision was made, at least in part, based on the labor available from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth. They, in fact, were used for the first phase of construction and were the first prisoners to be incarcerated in 1903. The first cell house opened in 1906, and the USP was completed in the mid-1920s. The walls are 40 feet high and 40 feet below ground and 3,030 feet long and encloses almost 23 acres. This prison was the largest maximum-security prison in the United States until 2005 when it was downgraded to medium-security housing approximately 1,670 inmates. This magnificent structure can be viewed and photographed only from a distance (across the street, south side of Metropolitan).

Some of the more famous inmates were "Machine Gun Kelly", Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo, Tom Pendergast, Carl Panzram, George Moran, John Franzese, Robert Stroud the "Bird Man of Alcatraz", and James Earl Ray, James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr., Michael Vick,  just to name a few.

The facility does not give public tours.

Federal Bureau of Prisons - Leavenworth 
1300 Metropolitan Avenue, Leavenworth, Kansas 66048
Phone:  (913) 682-8700
Fax:  (913) 578-1010
​Email:  LVN/ExecAssistant@bop.gov