Alderson FPC in West Virginia holds a special place in federal prison history: it was the first institution the U.S. government ever built specifically for women. The push for it came in the 1920s from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who argued that female federal offenders shouldn't be scattered through state prisons or tucked into wings of men's penitentiaries. The camp took its first arrivals in the spring of 1927 under its founding warden, Mary Belle Harris, with a formal dedication the following year. Its early design was deliberately different from a typical prison — cottage-style housing arranged around open grounds rather than cellblocks, meant to reflect a more rehabilitative philosophy for its era. Today it operates as a minimum-security camp on a few hundred acres in rural Greenbrier County. It picked up the nickname "Camp Cupcake" in the press after Martha Stewart served roughly five months there in 2004, though its inmate roster over the decades has also included singer Billie Holiday and radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose." In a small West Virginia town, it remains a significant local employer.