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About This Location

Angel Island is a hilly, grass and forest-covered island, the largest in San Francisco Bay. It is located one mile from the Tiburon Peninsula. The park covers 740 acres and is 781 feet high at the top of Mt. Livermore. It provides spectacular views of Marin County (San Francisco) and the Golden Gate, as well as more distant views of the entire Bay Area.

For over six thousand years, it was used by Miwok Indians as a fishing and hunting site. For almost 100 years - stretching from the Civil War to the Cold War - the island housed a variety of military installations. It also played a major role in the settlement of the West, serving both as a Public Health Service Quarantine Station and an Immigration Station.

The Quarantine Station

In 1892, a Quarantine Station was opened at Ayala Cove (then known as Hospital Cove), where ships from foreign ports could be fumigated, and immigrants suspected of carrying diseases could be kept in isolation. The warship USS Omaha was obtained from the Navy in 1893 and its boilers used to supply superheated steam for fumigation. The 40 buildings at the cove included a 400-bed detention barracks, a disinfection plant, laboratories and quarters for employees.

The first ship to have her passengers quarantined on the island was the steamship China on April 27, 1891: there was smallpox on board. When the passengers reached the station, they were checked by a doctor, then they bathed with carbolic soda, and dressed in overalls furnished by the attendants. Their clothing and baggage were sent through large metal cylinders where it was disinfected with live steam under pressure. The passengers were then assigned to barracks for a fourteen day quarantine. Their barracks were fumigated with sulphur dioxide and flushed with salt water every morning. Ships were fumigated with live steam; later chemicals such as cyanide and burning sulphur were used.

As years passed, use of Quarantine Station diminished. Better medical examinations were made at ports of embarkation and improved medical practises made lengthy quarantines unnecessary. Being an island isolated from the mainland made the station inconvenient and expensive to maintain. It was abandoned when the U.S. Public Health Service, which succeeded the old U.S. Marine Health Service, moved to San Francisco. Most of the quarantine buildings were torn down in the late 1950s, after  the Ayala Cove area became a state park. Those remaining include the former bachelor officers quarters (now a park museum) and the surgeon's and assistant surgeon's homes which are now used by state park personnel.