Quarantine Station

In 1891, a Quarantine Station was opened at Ayala Cove , where ships from foreign ports could be fumigated, and immigrants suspected of carrying diseases could be kept in isolation. Obtained from the Navy in 1892, the decommissioned, ALGOMA-class wooden screw sloop USS Omaha and its boilers were used to supply superheated steam for fumigation. Her masts cropped and a large covered structure was added to her deck to house diseased immigrants and sailors. The 40 buildings at the cove included a 400-bed detention barracks, a disinfection plant, laboratories, and quarters for staff.

People suspected of carrying disease were first isolated at Angel Island and then put through a process that would cleanse their bodies of the infection. After they were cleared they would continue to the mainland.

The position of the Quarantine station was inconvenient, since it was so far from mainland clinics.

As years passed, use of Quarantine Stations diminished. Better medical examinations were made at ports of embarkation, and improved medical practices made lengthy quarantines unnecessary. It was abandoned when the U.S. Public Health Service, which succeeded the old U.S. Marine Health Service, and moved to San Francisco.

In 1946 the Station was declared surplus, and all functions were moved to San Francisco. In 1957, three years after the cove became a State Park, all but four of the Quarantine Station’s forty-odd buildings were razed. Today little evidence remains of the sixty-five years of public service provided by the Angel Island Quarantine Station.

Source: http://angelisland.org/history/quarantine-station/