The Shawshank Redemption Trail

One of my favorite movies of all time was The Shawshank Redemption.  It was based on a Stephen King novel and was set in a prison.  I still remember the first time I saw it.  We were at the dollar theater in Naperville.  I didn't know what to expect at the time, but as it was a Morgan Freeman movie I definitely was interested when Doug mentioned going.  It was fantastic the first time I saw it and has been watched on the Heinisch television dozens of time since.  Cal and I even read the novela and enjoyed it just as much.

Thus, when I read that the Ohio State Reformatory was the setting for the movie and was open for tours I was highly interested.  The more I researched the sites from the movie the more I found to visit in central Ohio.  Doug was game for going and this morning we were the first ones in line for the 11 a.m. tour of the prison.  We were amazed at the enormity of the prison.  It was built at the turn of the century and was designed to look like a European castle.  It was impressive to say the least.

While there we were able to tour the rooms used during the movie including the warden's office and the staircase that was featured in several scenes.  One of the warden's personal rooms was transformed into the boarding house that Brooks and Red both stayed in when they were paroled.  Movie props were left for us to look through including the tunnel that Andy crawled to freedom through.  The only part missing was the courtyard and the back buildings which featured a lot of the outside scenes.  I have never visited a Hollywood set before and this was an amazing one to start with.

Along with the rooms used in the movie we were also able to visit the cells the prisoner lived in and several other parts of the reformatory.  It was pretty worn from years of use and lack of upkeep since it was closed in 1990.  Even though, it was extremely interesting to learn the history of the prison and walk its halls.  Later in the evening was to be a ghost tour and there were a lot of stories on the audio wand describing the sightings that had been claimed over the years.  Doug and I weren't as interested in the ghost stories, but we were impressed by all of the tourists that were already in attendance for the night festivities.

After our tour of the Ohio State Reformatory we headed for home.  Along the way we stopped at two more Shawshank movie sites.  Both were in the same town about 15 miles from the prison.  The first was the courthouse the Andy was convicted in and the second was the prisoners workshop.  We also found two different wineries along the way to stop at.  Doug enjoyed both of them and it was a nice break from driving.  Once we were backing Indiana we decided to stop at the Jefferson Pointe Mall.  We did some window shopping and I bought a few Yankee Candles.  Our last wine bar of the trips was Doug's favorite - Chop's.  It was fantastic way to end a fun few days.