It was the first prison built west of the Allegheny Mountains and completed on June 22, 1800 when[1] Kentucky was still virtually a wilderness.

The Kentucky Legislature of 1798 had appointed Harry Innes, Alexander S. Bullitt, Caleb Wallace, Isaac Shelby and John Coburn as commissioners to choose a location for a “penitentiary house.” The house was described "to be built of brick, or stone, containing cells, workshops, with an outside wall high enough and strong enough to keep the prisoners from getting away."

[2] Henry Innis, one of the commission, gave one acre of land and the legislature appropriated $500 towards its building with more funds to be allocated later.

[3] This prison was known as the Kentucky Penitentiary until the 1910 Prison Reform bill[4] passed March 1, 1910: This bill included that one institution be penal and the other reform; the changing of its mode of Capital Punishment from the gallows to the use of an electric chair, and included that the electric chair be kept in a "penitentiary," and that a "Death House" to be built.

The State had appropriated funds the previous year (1936) for the building of a new prison to ease the overcrowding.

Thomas S. Theobald[11] −1834-1844 Newton Craig and Col. William Henry[12] −1844-1855- 1848 – Both houses of legislature voted to elect a keeper of the penitentiary for the next six years: The law made him a partner of the State in the profits of the institution.

The State to furnish the penitentiary, work-shops, machinery, clerk, capital, and convicts, and therefore receives the stipulated sum annually...There were two or three candidates for the office.

Jeremiah South −1859-1862 Harry Todd --1862-1871–30 Females and 500 males in the Kentucky Penitentiary[15] 1856–1880 – The prison was under the Sinking Fund in the 1870s Jeremiah South −1871-1880 Feb 1878 the Kentucky General Assembly discussed the bill to abolish the lease system in favor of the warden system.

W. S. Stone --1880-1882-- Harry Todd --1882-1884-- J. Proctor Knott[17]—1884-1884-- W. T. Barry South --1884-1885-- E. H. Taylor --1885-1890-- M. P. Bolan --1890-1892-- Sam A. Norman[18] --1892-1893-- Resigned as warden to take over the State's Chari Factory in the Penitentiary Henry George --1893-1895—Senator from Graves County succeeded Norman Dr. E. M. Nell[19] --1895-1896—He had been a State Senator from Adair County.

Wells --1913-1916–1914 – 460 acres belonging to Mrs. Mastin, Frankfort, Kentucky was leased by the State for a prison farm at $3,000 year.

[27] Herbert M. Beard --August 5, 1925 – 1929—Died of pneumonia 20 Nov 1929; appointed Warden of the reformatory by the State Board of Charities and Corrections under Gov.

James Hammond --1937 – -- Major Joseph M. Kelly – Warden Tent City-- The towers[34] at the entrance of the Frankfort Penitentiary were built between 1835–1837 and were torn down November 1950.

H. I. Todd, Keeper of the Penitentiary was the only bid for the erection of a work-shop, chapel, dining room, smoke house, steam heating for workshop, and steam engine boilers &c. to be built on the penitentiary grounds per the passage of Chapter 1868 Act of the General Assembly in which $98,917.26 had been appropriated.

[49] Grace Browder First Woman Bank Robber to ever be sent to the state reformatory started a 20-year prison sentence March 7, 1929; convicted from Daviess County.

[53] There was high drama when the water lapped around the Penitentiary and the convicts were transferred to second-story cells.

The situation eased as the governor pardoned several hundred lower offenders and sent many of the remainder to the grounds of the Feeble-Minded Institute, to jails in Lexington, and elsewhere.

[54]National Guardsmen and state police oversaw the ferrying of prisoners by boat to dry land, and bused to their destinations.

A prison camp was hastily built of barbed wire and tents on a high hill about a mile away, taking about a week and constructed with lighting, heating and sanitary facilities.