Located fifty-five miles northwest of Baton Rouge, on the banks of the Mississippi River, lies the largest maximum security prison in the United States, the Angola Penitentiary. Also known as “The Farm” or “Alcatraz of the South,” the prison sits on 18,000 acres of former slave land. Angola is home to more than 5,000 prisoners, all there for violent crimes. There are currently just over 5,000 prisoners in Angola; eighty-six of whom await death on death row. Just over half of the prisoners are serving life sentences and are not expected to see life outside prison walls. Before 1835 inmates were held in a vermin-infested prison in New Orleans. That year, 1835, a prison was built in Baton Rouge using the same similar structure as previous prisons. As late as the 1880s, several companies "leased" the prison during the Civil War. Then, in 1880, Major James purchased an 8,000-acre plantation in West Feliciana Parish called Angola, which was named after the area of ​​Africa where the former slaves came from. He began keeping convicts in the old slave quarters. Years passed and the public learned of the cruelty and evil that the inmates were facing inside the prison. This prompted the state to intervene. In 1901, Angola Prison became an officially chartered Louisiana State Penitentiary. However, it still maintained the traditions of a slave plantation, but stopped much of the brutality of the slave traditions. It was only years later that Angola transformed into a modern prison. Over the last 100 years, many reforms, renovations and modifications in Angola have been implemented to improve the prison, but also to help rehabilitate prisoners. Unlike other prisons, Angola has a functioning prison farm. The......Angola paper medium......helps build chapels on prison grounds, provides funds for inmates' education and even covers rodeo expenses. In West Feliciana Parish sitting in the middle of an On an area of ​​18,000 acres sits Angola's maximum security prison. Angola Prison opened its doors more than a hundred years ago to some of the most serious criminals. The original wardens didn't know it, but decades later a popular rodeo would emerge due to some entertainment seeking prison officials and inmates. What began 40 years ago as an entertainment show by a handful of rodeo-loving inmates and employees is now a big business and tourist attraction. In addition to attracting thousands of people from around the world, the Angola Rodeo is also the largest continuously operating rodeo in the nation and provides a thrilling spectacle not only for spectators and prison officials, but also for inmates..