Cliffside Jail

The old Clifton Jail, a rock bastille blasted out of the side of the mountain was built in 1878. Many of the West's real badmen were incarcerated in it at one time or another. It is one of the State's most famous jails. It was contributed to the Lesinsky brothers, who built the first copper smelter on Chase Creek. Before the building of the jail, evildoers were punished by being sentenced to work in the mines. Many of them escaped before they completed their sentence leaving the county. The Lesinskys decided to have a jail built to hold them.