When the prison ran out of land to build on, a new facility was built in Florence. Burials were simple and quick. A shallow grave was dug where a wooden casket containing the body was lowered, covered with the caliche soil and then overlaid with rocks. It means those that are not claimed and are without friends will lie beneath the barren plot just outside the penitentiary - the convict's cemetery. Piles of rocks shaped like a grave with a plain slab giving the name and number mark the final resting place.
Services are brief at a convict's funeral.
There are no mourners, no tears, no flowers - a simple burial service by a minister or priest, and that is all. In later years, the prison became overcrowded, and often packed as many as 10 prisoners per cell, which measured about 8 feet by 10 feet. Most of the grave markers remained intact for as late as 1950. Since then, nearly all of them were taken by souvenir hunters or deteriorated under the weather. Only one grave marker has been found, that of J.F. Floyd, which is now on display inside the prison museum.