The Wyoming State Penitentiary was built in stages, with construction beginning in 1893 after authorization by the Wyoming Territorial Legislature and the laying of a cornerstone in 1888, and although intended to replace the territorial penitentiary in Laramie, it was not completed until 1901. Its original cellblock had 104 individual cells based on the Auburn Plan, which emphasized rehabilitating prisoners. From 1901 to 1911, private parties contracted with the state to operate the prison and hired out prison labor in the community, but in 1911 the Board of Charities and Reform took direct control and convicts worked on public projects, including Wyoming's first state highway system. In 1914 and 1915, a reinforced concrete wall replaced the wooden stockade around the grounds, and in 1916 a building was added for a kitchen, dining room, bakery, chapel, hospital, and death house. The buildings, later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 for their architectural and historic significance, fall into Romanesque, Mission, and Utilitarian styles, with the Romanesque structures including the administration building, cell block A, laundry, guard quarters-powerhouse complex, and commissary built of locally quarried sandstone. As penal philosophies changed, inmate treatment changed as well: prison reform movements in the 1920s and 1930s emphasized rehabilitation, prisoners worked on a prison farm or in a privately owned shirt factory, and they also attended school. Those opportunities disappeared during the Depression and World War II, conditions deteriorated by the mid-1950s, and prisoners rioted, leading to further reforms such as work release and educational programs. By the late 1970s, penologists judged the aging facility unacceptable for housing prisoners, and in 1981 the old Wyoming Pen closed as prisoners were transferred to a new facility south of town.