"PEACE AND FREEDOM WELCOME HOME OF THE FREE INDIAN LAND," the writing says in red letters 4 and 5 feet high.

"We restored it because it has a social significance," Koenen said recently. "It is part of what this park is all about."

Most of the 1.5 million people who visit Alcatraz are drawn to the island by tales of its dark past as America's most feared prison, the dead end of the American justice system.

But Alcatraz has more than one story - and one part of its history is the Indian occupation from the winter of 1969 to the spring of 1971, when a band of American Indians seized the island after the prison closed. They hoped to turn it into an Indian cultural center, or perhaps a small university devoted to native studies.