Angel Island-History

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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; the bay where he anchored is now known as Ayala Cove. 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 established a camp on the island, and it subsequently became an infantry garrison during the US campaigns against Native American peoples in the West.

By Devon Douglass

Timeline

1775 - Angel Island's rich history dates back to a time when the Miwok Native American tribe inhabited what is now Marin County. The Miwok's resided on the land for thousands of years before the Spanish laid claim to the island in 1775.

1814 - Angel Island California State Park in San Francisco Bay. Ref. California State Parks Angel Island. In 1814, the British, 26-gun, sloop of war, the HMS Raccoon, was damaged off the coast.

Sep 12, 1863 - On Sunday. September 12, 1863, the United States took possession ofAngel island as a military station by Company B, Third Artillery, under the command of Lieutenant John L. Tierson, who Landed with his company on the western extremity of the island.

Mar 26, 1886 - The Alcatraz cable was for1 the third time broken by an. anchor, making it evident that a direct cable between Alcatraz and the mainland cannot be maintained.

Mar 11, 1900 - Angel Island, Cal., March 11, 1900. Completed examination specimens dead Chinese demonstrates plague. No further history obtainable. Board health with Gassaway had meeting here to-day. Kinyodn.

1910 - In 1910, US authorities set up an immigrant detention center on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay to examine Chinese and other Asians seeking to enter the United States.

Oct 5, 1939 - As Marvin H. Riehl remembers, "I enlisted in the US Army on 5 October 1939, at Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. The following day I was assigned to the 88th Reconnaissance Squadron at Hamilton Field. We were using aircraft.

1940 - The United States abandoned the detention center on Angel Island in 1940, when "Chinese Exclusion Acts" were repealed and a fire destroyed the administration building. A museum has been established in the old detention center, so visitors can see what life was.

Jun 14, 1962 - A waterproof package, apparently made of Inmate raincoat material and containing names, addresses, photographs and personal property identifiable with the brothers was picked up in San Francisco Bay between Angel island and Alcatraz.

Oct 12, 2008 - On October 12, 2008, Angel Island was ravaged by a wildfire. In just 2 days, 303 acres went up in smoke.

By Devon Douglass

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Fort McDowell

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In the later nineteenth century, the army designated the entire island as "Fort McDowell" and developed further facilities there, including what is now called the East Garrison or Camp McDowell. A quarantine station was opened in Ayala 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 twentieth century, with troops engaged in World War I embarking and returning there. 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 General Frank M. Coxe, which transported troops to and from Angel Island on a regular schedule. Japanese and German POWs were also held on the island, supplanting the immigration needs which were curtailed during the war years. The army decommissioned the island in 1946, but returned to the southern point in the 1950s when a Nike missile base was constructed. However, this was decommissioned as obsolete in 1962.

By Devon Douglass

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Angel Island Immigration Station

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The Angel Island Immigration Station, opened in 1910, is located in Angel Island State Park, in San Francisco Bay. In 1905, construction of an Immigration Station began in the area then known as North Garrison. Surrounded by public controversy from its inception, the station was finally put into partial operation in 1910. It was designed to process Chinese immigrants whose entry was restricted by the Chinese Ex. Law of 1882.  Immigrants from Europe were all expected with the opening of the Panama Canal.  International events after 1914, including the outbreak of World War 1, cancelled the expected rush of Europeans, but Asians continued to arrive on the West Coast and to go through immigration procedures. In fact, more than 97 percent of the immigrants processed on Angel Island were Chinese.
The influx of Asians into the United States, dating from the California Gold Rush, created tension between them and other immigrants. During the 1870s, an economic downturn resulted in serious unemployment problems, and led to outcries against Asian immigrants who would work for low wages. Restrictive immigration laws were passed that allowed entry only to those that had been born in the U.S. or had husbands or fathers who were citizens. Enforcement of those laws was assigned to the Bureau of Immigration. 

By Crystal Thai

Angel Island Immigration Station-History

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Asian immigration can be dated back to "1788 with a crew of Chinese shipbuilders, carpenters, metal workers, and sailors. The government responded to the influx of immigration by instating a series of exclusion acts. Asian immigration quotas began with the Page Act of 1875, which essentially eliminated standard citizenship rights to the Chinese-Americans, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which essentially banned all Chinese immigration. Citizenship issues arose and Angel Island, "the Ellis Island of the West," officially opened as an immigration station in 1910 lasting through the Great Depression until 1940 when an electrical fire burned down the administration building. Angel Island Immigration Station served as the processing center for most of the 56,113 Chinese immigrants who are recorded as immigrating or returning from vacation in China. The reason this number is so large, even though the 1882 Exclusion Act was renewed in 1892 and 1902, is because in 1924 the Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act and Immigration Act of 1924, limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States. Asian countries were not specifically mentioned in the list of quotas. They were in the category of "All others: 1,900" out of a total of 165,000 immigrants.

By Crystal Thai

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Angel Island Immigration Station-Immigrant Perspective

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The predominantly Chinese immigrants who were detained at Angel Island were not welcomed in the United States. Held in cages for weeks, often months, individuals were subjected to rounds of interrogations to assess the legitimacy of their immigration applications. These interrogations were long, tiring, and stressful. Immigrants were made to recall minute details about their home and claimed relations—how many steps led up to your front door? Who lived in the third house in the second row of houses in your village? The interpreters for the proceedings may have not have spoken the particular dialect of the immigrant competently; most Chinese immigrants were from southern China at that time, many spoke Cantonese. It was difficult to pass the interrogations, and cases were appealed many times over before one could leave the island and enter the United States. Oftentimes, successful immigrants produced elaborate instruction manuals that coached fellow detainees in passing interrogations; if anyone was caught with these manuals, they would most likely be deported. Many of the detainees turned to poetry as expression—they spilled their emotions onto the very walls that contained them. Some of the poems are bitter and angry, others placid and contemplative; all, however, read with a heavy sadness.

By Crystal Thai

Angel Island Immigration Station-Result

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In 1940, a fire that destroyed the administration building in August of that year hastened the government decision to abandon the Immigration Station on Angel Island. On November 5, the last group of about 200 immigrants, including about 150 Chinese, were transferred from Angel Island to temporary quarters in San Francisco. The so-called "Chinese Exclusion Acts," which were adopted in the early 1880's were repealed by Federal action in 1943, because by that time, China was an ally of the US in World War II. Today, most visitors to Angel Island find the Immigration Station a place of reflection.  While often called the Ellis Island of the West, the Angel Island Immigration Station, was in fact quite different. Arrivals at Ellis Island were welcomed to this country, by the near by Statue of Liberty and screened primarily for medical reasons leaving an average of 2-3 hours of arriving.  At Angel Island, the objective was to exclude new arrivals, the memories of many returning visitors are therefore bittersweet. A museum has been established in the old barracks building. It includes a re-creation of one of the dormitories, and highlights some of the poems that were carved into the station's walls. 

By Crystal Thai

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Angel Island State Park

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In 1954, the State Park Commission sanctioned California State Parks to acquire 37 acres around Ayala Cove, signifying the beginning of Angel Island State Park. Further land was acquired four years soon after, in 1958. The final federal Department of Defense employees departed in 1962, turning over the whole island as a state park in December of the same year. There is a single working United States Coast Guard lighthouse on the island at Point Blunt. The lighthouse at Point Stuart has been shut down. Lighthouses are very useful for the lost at sea, even if Angel Island is in a nearly enclosed bay. For which is kind of funny, considering the fact that most people don’t get lost in the bay. Unless you are tourists visiting the Bay Area then I say hello. Do people even read these? They probably just skim though and give a report on how great ours were. Most people sometimes pretend that there blogs are “all that”. But in reality, they are just things you just copy and pasted from google or wikipedia. The final federal Department of Defense employees departed in 1962, turning over the whole island as a state park in December of the same year. There is a single working United States Coast Guard lighthouse on the island at Point Blunt.

By Brent Andrada

State Park Admittance

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Admittance to the isle is by personal vessels such as boats or jet skis, or public ferry from San Francisco, Tiburon or Vallejo. Ferry service costs less during the winter time. You can use your own personal bicycles on Angel Island if you enter on the public ferry but the only downside is that it can only be used on the island's main roads and not off road. Rental bicycles and that new 2-wheeled Segways can also be rented on the island but would cost some extra dinero. Dogs are prohibited admittance onto the island unless they are seeing-eye dogs. Roller-blading and skateboarding are also banned because they can’t make any money off of you having fun, and they also want to avoid unnecessary lawsuits so they can continue running the park. They also don’t want you to bring your own wood to burn because they are afraid of causing more fires. Yet they still want you to risk your lives by reserving campsites. Night travel on the island is prohibited in some areas because they don’t want to find missing white people.

By Brent Andrada

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The Fire

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On October 12, 2008 at just about 9:00 p.m., a blaze able to be seen from all in the region of the San Francisco Bay, started on the island that spread to an probable 100 acres in an hour. By 8:00 a.m. the following day, the conflagration had baked 250 acres, about a third of the entire island, and was 20 percent controlled. Firefighters were commuted from the mainland and helicopters plunged water and fire retardants to guard the historical structures and snuff out the inferno that was entirely enclosed by October 14, 2008 at around 7:00 p.m. Source and twig extirpation of non-native plant life is in progress in an attempt to refurbish the unique oak woods and grassland biome. Previous en route for the exclusion of the eucalyptus, the only fires traced were structural. Ever since, there have been numerous other fires counting one in 2005 that destroyed 25 acres and a less significant 2-3 acre rage in 2004.

By Brent Andrada