Big House Prison Museum

The Retired Correctional Peace Officers (RCPO) Museum at Folsom State Prison (founded in 1975) chronicles the prison's bloody history. In 2011, the museum was annexed by the Old Guard Foundation (OGF). The OGF, in 2014, morphed the museum into the Big House Prison Museum with intention of making it a national museum, exposition and education center for Corrections and the people who live, work and visit the facilities. ​ The Museum was dedicated July 1, 1987 by CCPOA's Retired Chapter in memory of those staff from the California Department of Corrections and California Youth Authority who died from Cancer. ​ You can still discover the reason for Johnny Cash's "Blues" at Folsom State Prison. Learn how the prison was fashioned from gray granite from the surrounding rock quarries. The museum features a wealth of photographs, old hemp ropes used to hang prisoners, memorabilia from Johnny Cash's famed concert shows, a hand-cranked Gatling gun, many inmate manufactured weapons and an eight-foot motorized Ferris wheel created by a prisoner in the 1930s, made of a quarter million toothpicks. ​ In the future, you will be able to see and experience the same wealth of information as it pertains to other Correctional facilities nation wide.