This day in history: Prison in Walla Walla closed ‘blood alley’ in attempt to strengthen security. Harvard expert doubted Norsemen were in Spokane area in 1010 A.D.

From 1976: Change was in the offing at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla.

After years of trying to create “so-called liberalized prison programs,” tighter security was being implemented. One example: “Blood alley,” a long breezeway where some murders had taken place, was sealed off. Increased security was also implemented at the prison’s main control room and in the prison hospital, where a nurse was stabbed during the December 1974 prisoner takeover.

The president of the union representing 300 prison guards said he still had concerns about a “motorcycle club”: a group of bikers who had converted an old power plant “into a shop for their half-dozen choppers.”

“Guards very seldom walk in there alone for fear of their safety,” said the union president. “If they did go in there and see something wrong, they’d probably have to overlook it or get knifed.”

The president of the Washington State Penitentiary Motorcycle Association had a completely different take. “Actually, we serve a good purpose,” he said. “The guys in the club learn how to work on bikes, to build them from the ground up.”

From 1926: The Spokane Daily Chronicle interviewed Professor Oluf Opsjon, who two days earlier had made the astounding claim that he had discovered a “Norse burial mound” in the Five Mile area north of Spokane, and that the painted rocks in the area were Norse runes describing a nearby battle between Indians and Norsemen in A.D. 1010 .

When informed that Herbert Spindlen, an eminent Harvard University museum curator, “doubted the authenticity” of these findings, Upsjon replied, “Dr. Spindlen doesn’t know, that’s all.”

He claimed the “evidence was absolute.” He believed that Norsemen made exploration parties into the Pacific Northwest and left evidence in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

Opsjon was born in Norway and was a former Swedish army soldier. He came to the U.S. 30 years earlier and became an enthusiastic student of Norse history.

He later admitted that he was not actually a “professor,” and did “not actually possess the degrees to substantiate it.”