Historical Marker · No. 529
Angel Island
Tiburon, Marin County · California
Erected by State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the City of Tiburon, 1970
The bronze gives Ayala's anchorage four lines and the island's hardest chapter its final word. From 1910 to 1940 the immigration station on the island's north side held arrivals from across the Pacific, among them some 175,000 Chinese, whom the exclusion laws singled out for interrogation. Most waited a few weeks; some waited three months, a few almost two years. Into the soft wood of the barracks walls detainees carved and brushed poems in Chinese, of anger and homesickness, and more than a hundred survive. The station closed after a 1940 fire.
What the plaque says
Angel Island In 1775, the packet San Carlos, first known Spanish ship to enter San Francisco Bay, anchored in this cove while her commander, Lieut. Juan Manuel de Ayala, directed the first survey of the bay. Ayala named this island Isla de los Angeles. The island has been a Mexican rancho, U.S. military post, bay defense site, and both a quarantine and immigration station. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 529 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the City of Tiburon, September 26, 1970.
Where it stands
37.86679, -122.43482 · Directions