Emily Shepard

Emily Shepard was raised in St. Paul and returned to the city after roaming around the western United States as an archaeologist. Her research interests include “invisible” labor, culturally modified trees, and ghost towns in our midst. She was a 2020 recipient of the Gale Family Library Legacy Research Fellowship.

In operation for nearly 80 years, Stillwater prison’s twine factory produced over a billion pounds of cordage

By Emily Shepard

April 5, 2021

The plan to manufacture binder twine within the prison arose from many factors: farmers’ demands for cheap twine, political pressure to make the prison profitable, and reformers’ desire to provide skills to incarcerated people.