Notes

Section:
FEATURES
Angel Island’s role as an immigration station is just one part of its history. Consider this: In April 1775, militia groups in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, fired the first shots in the American Revolutionary War. In August 1775, a Spanish explorer arrived off the coast of California. He sailed into a large bay and anchored his ship in the cove of a large island. The Spanish crew explored the area and gathered information. The ship’s captain, Juan Manuel de Ayala, put Angel Island, Ayala Cove, and San Francisco Bay on the first maps.

Angel Island appeared uninhabited by people when the Spanish arrived. By the early 1800s, however, Russian fur traders in search of sea otters had traveled far enough south to establish a storehouse there. In 1814, the British also made use of the bay and the island to repair a damaged warship. The ship’s name, the Racoon, became the name for the strait of water between the island and the mainland (the spelling was later changed to “Raccoon”). In 1839, a Spanish rancher introduced cattle to the island. But when the Spanish were defeated in the U.S.– Mexican War (1846–1848), they ceded California and most of the present-day American Southwest to the United States.

California became a state in 1850, but its location on the West Coast separated it by thousands of miles from the rest of the country. When the Civil War began in 1861, the federal government was concerned that Confederate sympathizers might attack California, which was a Union state. In 1863, it established Camp Reynolds on the west side of the island to protect San Francisco Bay.

Camp Reynolds then garrisoned and processed troops fighting in the Indian Wars in the West in the mid- and late 1800s, in the Spanish–American War in 1898, and in the Philippine Insurrection from 1899 to 1902.

In the late 1800s, a quarantine station and a discharge camp were built on the east side of the island to care for and isolate sick soldiers and to handle the large numbers of troops returning from overseas. By 1905, almost 90,000 troops were discharged through the camp.

The army renamed its post on the island Fort McDowell in 1900 and divided it into sections. Camp Reynolds became known as West Garrison. By 1910, a mess hall, a hospital, an enlisted men’s barracks, officers’ quarters, and other buildings were being added on the other side of the island, which became East Garrison.

During World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945), Fort McDowell was a busy U.S. army post. New recruits were processed there before being shipped overseas, and returning soldiers who had fought in the Pacific stopped there before being dis-charged from the army.

After the immigration station closed in 1940, that site came under the army’s control and became known as North Garrison. The barracks served as a detention center for German, Italian, and Japanese immigrants. They were considered “enemy aliens” because they came from nations against which the United States was fighting. The barracks also housed prisoners of war.

The army abandoned most of its buildings when it left the island in August 1946. Slowly, portions of the island came under California’s administration. But in 1954, the army set up a Nike missile base on the island to defend the United States against a possible invasion by the Soviet Union. By the end of 1962, the base was deactivated, and the entire island came under the state’s jurisdiction. Today, the California State Parks system oversees it.

DID YOU KNOW?

The earliest people to be associated with Angel Island were the Coast Miwoks. They inhabited the coastal lands around the San Francisco Bay at least 2,000 years ago. Using small boats, they traveled to the island, where they spent time hunting, fishing, and gathering food.

Ceded means yielded or surrendered possession of something.

Quarantine refers to an enforced isolation to prevent the spread of contagious diseases.

FAST FACT

After World War II, Angel Island was considered as a possible location for the headquarters of the new United Nations.

PHOTO (COLOR): This row of officers’ housing at Fort McDowell was built in the early 1900s.

PHOTO (COLOR): A restored officers’ quarters at Camp Reynolds is open to the public.

PHOTO (COLOR): The detention barracks at the immigration station remains standing and is open to the public.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): The use of Camp Reynolds as an army installation dates back to the Civil War.

PHOTO (COLOR)