McNeil Island is an island in the northwest United States in south Puget Sound, located southwest of Tacoma, Washington. With a land area of , it lies just north of Anderson Island; Fox Island is to the north, across Carr Inlet, and to the west, separated from Key Peninsula by Pitt Passage. The Washington mainland lies to the east, across the south basin of Puget Sound. The island has been owned by the government for most of its history; it was a federal penitentiary for over a from 1875 turned over to the Washington State Department of Corrections and became the McNeil Island Corrections Center, until it closed It was the last remaining island prison in the country to be accessible only by air and sea. In November 2010, the state announced closure plans for 2011, saving for violent sexual offenders remains on the island. The McNeil Island Historical Society was chartered in 2010 shortly after the closing of the prison for the purpose of educating the public about, and preserving, the rich history of McNeil Island. History The island was part of the territory of the Steilacoom people, a Coast Salish tribe. It was named in 1841 by Charles Wilkes in honor of Captain William Henry McNeill of the Hudson's Bay Company, who greeted Wilkes upon the arrival of the United States Exploring Expedition at Fort Nisqually in southern Puget Sound. Wilkes’ misspelling was never corrected. The Robert A. Inskip expedition of 1846 named the island Duntze, after Captain John A. Duntze of the Royal Navy. In 1847, during the British map reorganization project, Henry Kellett restored the earlier name McNeil. The U.S. government bought land on McNeil Island in 1870 and opened a federal penitentiary there in 1875. The federal government accumulated parcels of land adjacent to the penitentiary; by 1937, it had purchased all the land on the island and compelled its last residents to leave. The federal penitentiary's most famous inmates were probably Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz", who was held there from 1909 to 1912; Charles Manson, who before inspiring Helter Skelter in killing Sharon Tate and others in 1969, was an inmate from 1961 to 1966 for trying to cash a forged government check; and Alvin Karpis, who was transferred to McNeil Island in 1962, from Alcatraz as a result of its impending closure, to complete his sentence. Karpis, who was labeled the