Angel Island (California) Informations

Angel Island is an island in San Francisco Bay offering expansive 360° views of the San Francisco skyline, the Marin County Headlands and Mount Tamalpais. The entire island is included within Angel Island State Park and is administered by California State Parks. The island, a California Historical Landmark, has been used for a variety of purposes, including military forts, a US Public Health Service Quarantine Station, and a US Bureau of Immigration inspection and detention facility. The Angel Island Immigration Station on the northeast corner of the island, where officials detained, inspected, and examined approximately one million immigrants, has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Angel Island is the second largest island in area of the San Francisco Bay (Alameda is the largest). On a clear day, Sonoma and Napa can be seen from the north side of the island; San Jose can be seen from the south side of the island. The highest point on the island, almost exactly at its center, is Mount Caroline Livermore, more commonly known as simply Mt Livermore, at a height of 788 feet (240 m). The island is almost entirely in the city of Tiburon, in Marin County, although, there is a small sliver (0.7%) at the eastern end of it (Fort McDowell) which extends into the territory of the City and County of San Francisco. The island is separated from the mainland of Marin County by Raccoon Strait, the depth of the water approximately 90 feet. The United States Census Bureau reported a land area of 3.107 km² (1.2 sq mi) and a population of 57 people as of the 2000 census.

Until about ten thousand years ago, Angel Island was connected to the mainland; it was cut off by the rise in sea levels due to the end of the last ice age. From about two thousand years ago the island was a fishing and hunting site for Coast Miwok Native Americans. Similar evidence of Native American settlement is found on the nearby mainland of the Tiburon Peninsula upon Ring Mountain. In 1775, the Spanish naval vessel San Carlos made the first European entry to the San Francisco Bay under the command of Juan de Ayala. Ayala anchored off Angel Island, and gave it its modern name (Isla de los Ángeles); the bay where he anchored is now known as Ayala Cove.

In his book Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. mentions in chapter 26, that in 1834 his sailing ship collected wood from "a small island, about two leagues from the Yerba Buena anchorage, called by us 'Wood Island' and by the Mexicans 'Isla de los Ángeles' and was covered with trees to the waters edge."

Like much of the California coast, Angel Island was subsequently used for cattle ranching. In 1863, during the American Civil War, the U.S. Army was concerned about Confederate naval raiders attacking San Francisco. It decided to construct artillery batteries on Angel Island, first at Stuart (or Stewart) Point and then Point Knox. Col. René Edward De Russy was the Chief Engineer; James Terry Gardiner was the engineer tasked with designing and supervising the work. The Army established a camp on the island (now known as Camp Reynolds or the West Garrison), and it subsequently became an infantry garrison during the US campaigns against Native American peoples in the West.

In the later 19th century, the army designated the entire island as "Fort McDowell" and developed further facilities there, including what is now called the East Garrison or Fort McDowell. A quarantine station was opened in Ayala Cove (which at the time was known as Hospital Cove) in 1891. During the Spanish–American War the island served as a discharge depot for returning troops. It continued to serve as a transit station throughout the first half of the 20th century, with troops engaged in World War I embarking and returning there. At the end of World War I the disembarkation center was commanded by William P. Burnham, who had commanded the 82nd Division in France during the war.

In 1938, hearings concerning charges of membership in the Communist political party against labor leader Harry Bridges were held on Angel Island before Dean James Landis of Harvard Law School. After eleven weeks of testimony that filled nearly 8,500 pages, Landis found in favor of Bridges. The decision was accepted by the United States Department of Labor and Bridges was freed.

During World War II the need for troops in the Pacific far exceeded prior needs. The facilities on Angel Island were expanded and further processing was done at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Prior to the war the infrastructure had been expanded, including building the Army ferry USAT General Frank M. Coxe, which transported troops to and from Angel Island on a regular schedule. Fort McDowell was used as a detention station for Japanese, German and Italian immigrant residents of Hawaii arrested as potential fifth columnists (despite a lack of supporting evidence or access to due process). These internees were later transferred to inland Department of Justice and Army camps. Japanese and German prisoners of war were also held on the island, supplanting immigration needs, which were curtailed during the war years.

The army decommissioned the military post in 1947. In 1954 a Nike missile station was installed on the island. The missile magazines were constructed above Point Blunt on the island's southeast corner, and the top of Mount Ida (now Mount Caroline Livermore) was flattened to make way for a helipad and the associated radar and tracking station (IFC). The missiles were removed in 1962, when the military left the island. The missile launch pad still exists, but the station atop Mount Caroline Livermore was restored to its original contours in 2006.

The Bubonic plague posed such a threat to the U.S. that Angel island opened as a quarantine station in 1891 to screen Asian passengers and their baggage prior to landing on U.S. soil. The construction of this federally funded quarantine station was completed in 1890 at a cost of approximately $98,000. The compound contained many separate buildings including detention barracks, disinfection facilities, convalescence quarters, and an isolation hospital that was known as the "leper's house". Even with the new construction, the facilities were lacking in cleanliness, staffing and adequate space.

In response to the death of Wong Chut King, a Chinese immigrant who worked in a rat-infested lumberyard in Chinatown, the San Francisco Health Board quickly quarantined the local area to neutralize possible disease-causing agents. Persons suspected of having any contact with this sickness were sent to isolation facilities.

In response to more deaths, tissue samples were sent to Angel Island for testing to determine if they harbored Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for spreading the bubonic plague. At this time, the plague was difficult to diagnose due to other diseases, which could mask the presence of plague. Bacteriologist Joseph Kinyoun, who was stationed at Angel Island in 1899, believed that the plague would spread throughout San Francisco's Chinatown after Y. pestis was confirmed from one of the deaths. The samples were discovered by Frank Wilson, an assistant city health officer, and Wilfred Kellog, another bacteriologist.

The construction of the Angel Island immigration station began in 1905 but was not used until 1910. This zone was known as China Cove. It was built for controlling Chinese entry into the United States. From 1910 to 1940, Angel Island served as an immigration station processing immigrants from 84 different countries, approximately one million being Chinese immigrants. The purpose of the immigration station was to investigate Chinese who had been denied entry from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Immigrants had to prove that they had husbands or fathers who were U.S. citizens in order not to be deported.

The immigration station at Angel Island was predominantly used to inspect, disinfect, and detain Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian immigrants who sailed across the Pacific Ocean. In addition to standard medical examinations, Chinese immigrants were inspected for parasitic diseases, and the tests for intestinal parasites required a stool specimen. Immigrants described the examination and disinfection process as brutal, humiliating, and indecent. Passengers who were found to be sick were sent to the hospital on the island until they could pass a medical examination and an immigration hearing. Investigation processes determined the length of time an immigrant would stay at the station and Chinese immigrants could be detained for a period as short as two weeks to as long as two years. A person's racial identity and social class determined the intensity of the examination imposed, resulting in fewer white Europeans and American citizens being subjected to the inspections.

A fire destroyed the administration building in 1940, and subsequent immigration processing took place in San Francisco. On November fifth of 1940, the last gathering of around 200 immigrants, including around 150 Chinese, were exchanged from Angel Island to brief quarters in San Francisco.

In 1964, the Chinese American community successfully lobbied the State of California to designate the immigration station as a State Landmark. Today, the Angel Island Immigration Station is a federally designated National Historic Landmark. It was renovated by the California State Parks, which re-opened February 16, 2009. Docent tours for school groups can be made by appointment.

In 1955, the State Park Commission authorized California State Parks to purchase 38 acres (15 ha) around Ayala Cove, marking the birth of Angel Island State Park. Additional acreage was purchased four years later, in 1959. The last federal Department of Defense personnel withdrew in 1962, turning over the entire island as a state park in December of the same year.

There is one active United States Coast Guard lighthouse on the island at Point Blunt. The lighthouse at Point Stuart has been disestablished.

The island's native plant communities include coastal grassland and coastal scrub, mostly on the island's south- and west-facing slopes and ridge tops, and evergreen woodland – predominantly of Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia), bay (Umbellularia californica), toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), and madrone (Arbutus menziesii), with California Hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) and Western Sword Fern (Polystichum munitum) in the understory – on the eastern and northern portions of the island sheltered from the westerly winds from the Golden Gate.

It is thought that the Coast Miwoks used regular fires to expand the grassland and shrublands at the expense of the woodlands. The grasslands and shrublands provided edible seeds and bulbs, and supported larger numbers of deer and small game.

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