Angel Island (Spanish: Isla de los Ángeles) is an island in San Francisco Bay. The entire island is included within Angel Island State Park, administered by California State Parks. The island, a California Historical Landmark, has been used for a variety of purposes, including seasonal hunting and gathering by Indigenous peoples, water and timber supply for European ships, ranching by Mexicans, United States military installations, a United States Public Health Service Quarantine Station, and a U.S. Bureau of Immigration inspection and detention facility. It has been compared to Ellis Island in New York, both being centers of immigration.

The Angel Island Immigration Station, on the northeast corner of the island, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark, is where officials detained, inspected, and examined approximately one million immigrants, who primarily came from Asia.

Geography

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 . This peak is named for Caroline Sealy Livermore.

The island is almost entirely in the city of Tiburon, in Marin County, although there are small slivers (0.7%) at the eastern end of it (Fort McDowell, Point Blunt) 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 . The United States Census Bureau reported a land area of and a population of 57 people as of the 2000 census.

Geology

Angel Island emerged during the last Ice Age when the ocean, much lower and located miles to the west, shaped the landscape. The rocks of Angel Island are part of the Franciscan Complex, an extensive belt of marine sedimentary and igneous rocks which were deformed and metamorphosed during the Mesozoic Era. Metamorphism of the Franciscan Complex occurred at high pressures and low temperatures, producing indicator minerals jadeite and glaucophane, characteristic of subduction zone metamorphism.

The rocks of Angel Island have been grouped with similar rocks displaying similar metamorphic minerals in the East Bay Hills and on the Tiburon Peninsula as the "Angel Island Nappe". The island's form is roughly, featuring steep ridges radiating from the central peak of the Mount Caroline Livermore.

The rocks are diverse, including well-exposed serpentinite in the old quarry, sandstones and conglomerates containing clasts of glaucophane schist on Kayak Beach, meta-volcanics and cherts with dark blue amphibole and brown needles of stilpnomelane on Perles Beach. However, their relationships to one another are not well understood. The Franciscan Complex rocks are unconformably overlain by flat-lying sediments of the Colma Formation near Blunt Point on the south coast of the island.

These sandstones are only weakly consolidated and are eroding to provide a supply of sand to the south coast of the island, in contrast to the northern and western beaches which are dominated by pebbles and cobbles. The shape of the hillslopes on Angel Island include the scars of prehistoric landslides and mass wasting, and deposits of eroded material may have been transported away from the island by currents in the San Francisco Bay.

History

Until about 10,000 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 2,000 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 (). The bay where he anchored is now known as Ayala Cove.

In his book Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1841, 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."

It is shown, labeled I. de los Angeles, on an 1850 survey map of the San Francisco Bay Area made by Cadwalader Ringgold and an 1854 map of the area by Henry Lange. Quarry operations began in the 1850s on the east side of the island near Quarry Point, with quarried stones used in the construction of a new fortress on Alcatraz Island, a new Navy shipyard on Mare Island, and a bank in San Francisco. In 1867, General McDowell took control of the quarry and used it for Army construction at Fort Point, the San Francisco Presidio, and on Angel Island itself.

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.Personal Letter of James T. Gardiner to his mother, San Francisco, November 7, 1863, New York State Library

The Army established Fort Reynolds, which was garrisoned by Battery B, 3rd Artillery Regiment. The post was named by Second Lieutenant John L. Tiernon, commander of Battery B, in honor of John F. Reynolds, a Union Army general who had been killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. This portion of the island is 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.

Fort McDowell

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 served as a transit station in the first half of the 20th century, with troops engaged in World War I embarking and returning there. During the war, the post was commanded by Colonel George K. McGunnegle, who reached the mandatory retirement age of 64 in 1918 but remained on duty until the end of the war. After the war, the disembarkation center was commanded by William P. Burnham, who had commanded the 82nd Division in France during the war.

In May 1932, the Army created the San Francisco Port of Embarkation as a command which included the Overseas Replacement and Discharge Service at Fort McDowell, Fort Mason and the Pacific Army Transport Service ships and facilities.

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 , which transported troops to and from Angel Island on a regular schedule.

Part of North Garrison of Fort McDowell functioned as a Prisoner of War Processing Center for Japanese and German prisoners of war.

Fort McDowell was used as a detention station for Japanese immigrant residents of Hawaii (one percent of the ethnic Japanese population in Hawaii) arrested as potential fifth columnists (despite a lack of supporting evidence or access to due process), German and Italian."Fort McDowell/Angel Island" Densho Encyclopedia (accessed 13 Jun 2014) 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.

After World War II ended, the reorganization of the San Francisco Port of Embarkation did not include Fort McDowell, and the post was decommissioned on August 28, 1946.

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.Hanrahan, Michael, 2009. A Visitor's Guide to Angel Island State Park. p. 37. Way Out There Press.

Quarantine station

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.Risse. G., (2012). Plague, fear, and politics in San Francisco's Chinatown. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press The construction of this federally funded quarantine station was completed in 1890 at a cost of approximately $99,000. 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. After 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. The culture was tested on animals for four days, and Y. pestis was confirmed. Bacteriologist Joseph J. Kinyoun, who was stationed at Angel Island in 1899, believed that the plague would spread throughout San Francisco's Chinatown.

Immigration station

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 countries, mostly from China, Japan, Russia and South Asia (in that order). 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.