HISTORIC OCONEE COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA Subject: Oconee County Cage Version 1.0, 5-Jan-2003, FCH-11.txt **************************************************************** REPRODUCING NOTICE: ------------------- These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit, or presentation by any other organization, or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Paul M Kankula - nn8nn Seneca, SC, USA Oconee County SC GenWeb Coordinator Oconee County SC GenWeb Homestead http://www.rootsweb.com/~scoconee/oconee.html Oconee County SC GenWeb Tombstone Project http://www.rootsweb.com/~scoconee/cemeteries.html http://www.usgwtombstones.org/southcarolina/oconee.html Contributor: Frederick C. Holder, Box 444, Pickens, SC 29671 **************************************************************** DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at kankula1@innova.net in Jan-2003 DATAFILE LAYOUT : Paul M. Kankula at kankula1@innova.net in Jan-2003 HISTORY WRITE-UP : Frederick C. Holder in 1989 OCONEE COUNTY CAGE - Constructed about 1903 The Oconee County Cage, or "Jail on Wheels," was actually a prison pulled by a team of horses. During the early twentieth century, it was not possible to return prisoners doing work in the most distant parts of Oconee County to the county jail at Walhalla every night. Although the cage is only fourteen feet long, eight feet wide, and seven feet high, there were four metal bunk beds of three tiers each in- side for a total of twelve beds. A small metal barrel in the center of the floor was used for a fire on cold nights, and canvas covered the sides of the cage to protect the men from cold winds. While this treatment of prisoners seems horrible by today's standards, it was hardly unusual for the early 1900s, and it was certainly far better than the treatment many prisoners received during the years before 1900. The men who worked on the roads in the county and who slept in the cage at night were often serving short sentences of less than two months. On weekends, their families sometimes visited them and brought small baskets of food from home. One man, who remembers visiting a relative assigned to the cage while performing county work, remarked that everyone including the guards would have lunch together on Sunday and talk about friends and local happenings. In 1915, when the prisoners were working on the Oconee Station Road, they were fed fried bacon, biscuits and syrup, and coffee for breakfast; cabbage, bacon, and cornbread for lunch; and fried bacon, biscuits and syrup for supper. This diet was probably standard at that period. After the county acquired gasoline powered trucks and machinery in the 1930s and built a county stockade (prison), the cage ceased to be used. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Location: Next to the Oconee County Law Enforcement Center on Church Street in Walhalla. An identical "cage" in better condition is displayed next to the Pickens County Museum located on the corner of Pendleton and Johnson streets in Pickens. The People's Journal reported in the issue of March 19,1903: "As the Pickens County, S.C., portable caravansary, made for the county chain-gang, passed through Pickens on Saturday the earth trembled. It might prove a solu- tion of the road problem, if enough mules could be attached to it to draw it over the county. It is a road packer."