CROWN POINT | It took five hours, plenty of pounding and lots of WD 40 to smooth the way to freedom Saturday for Jim Emerson, of DeMotte, a board member of the Old Sheriff's House Foundation, Inc.

Emerson and others have been eager to renovate the historic stretch of jail cells in the Old Sheriff's House and Jail in Crown Point, which were once the temporary home to gangster John Dillinger and his gang, before the man known as Public Enemy No. 1 made his infamous escape.

But preventing "the freedom" for the project to go forward were two troublesome cells, with barred sliding doors firmly locked in place from years of rust and deterioration built up since the property ceased being used as a Lake County lock-up in the mid-1970s.

On Saturday, Emerson welcomed Jack Schoettle, who works in the Boone County Jail, just north of Indianapolis, to visit Crown Point's criminal claim-to-fame to take a crack at opening the two stuck cells, which became sealed shut once the gear and pulley mechanism housed above the cell block stopped working more than a quarter a century ago.

The work began at 9 a.m., and by 1:30 p.m., the cell that once housed murderer Herbert Youngblood, who escaped with Dillinger, was opened.

A half hour later, the second cell, which once housed all of the hostages Dillinger forced inside during his March 1934 jail break, also was opened.

"Once we loosened them up, we had to manually open them," said Schoettle, who was familiar with the mechanics of the old jail's 1928 operating system, since the original jail in Boone County has the same design.

"It was a bit disappointing, since our original hopes were to get the entire mechanism working again so the doors would open in the way they were originally intended."

Donating his time and only asking for "some lunch" as payment for his services, Schoettle said the day was worthwhile as a chance to be a part of history.

Emerson said he and other board members hope renovating this wing, called "felony block," which includes Dillinger's four-bunk cell, will help with tourism while riding the wave of fame created by the Universal Pictures film "Public Enemies." It used the property for on-location filming.

In addition to tours hosted every Saturday, a new and expanded gift shop added to the main room of the first floor now offers a variety of unique items for sale, from "jail wall chalk," handcuffs and original painted jailhouse bricks to old newspaper reprints, photos of Johnny Depp as Dillinger shot at the property and books about the 1930s period.

"We like to think of this space as history in the making," Emerson said.

Prisons, cell scenes become trendy tourism: In addition to the Old Sheriff's House and Jail in Crown Point becoming a popular travel destination, a sister cell property in Joliet also is enjoying a fair share of the spotlight (as opposed to searchlights) as of this weekend.

The Joliet Correctional Center in Joliet, Ill., also called Statesville Prison, opened it doors to eager curiosity-seekers Saturday officially renamed Joliet Prison Park.

More than a century old and a part of the notorious landscape along Collins Street because of the 25-foot-tall limestone walls surrounded by barbed wire, the prison closed in 2002.

But in recently years, it has regained new fame as a filming location for popular films and television shows, including "Natural Born Killers" and "The Blues Brothers" to Fox television's "Prison Break," and, most recently, Universal Pictures' "Public Enemies."

The park, which only includes the outside grounds, cost nearly $100,000 to create the signage and other up-to-code amenities needed before the public could be invited inside. The project was funded by the city and a tourism grant, with the possibility that the inside of the prison might also one day open as an adjoining museum attraction. Admission to the park is free.