COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (WOWT) – On this date in history, one of the most unique ways to lock people up was officially devised.
In 1881, two men received the patent for the “squirrel cage” jail in Council Bluffs.
There were only 18 rotating jails ever built, and the one here in the Omaha-metro is the only one of them that is three stories tall, and only one of just three rotating jails still in existence. It’s a big cylinder that a single warden could operate with a hand-crank, spinning all 30 cells at once to allow one person in or out at a time…