ANGEL ISLAND IMMIGRATION STATION: Poetry on the Walls

View of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay from the Tiburon Ferry.

Angel Island sits in the middle of San Francisco Bay, not far from the much smaller island of Alcatraz. It can be reached by ferry from San Francisco, Oakland, or Tiburon (in Marin County). In 2013, when I visited Angel Island, I took a tram tour and heard about the island's long history, including the story of lighthouse keeper, Juliet Nichols, and how she kept the fog bell ringing by hand on an extremely foggy night and day in the summer of 1906. That became the inspiration for my children's picture book, Keeper of the Light: Juliet Fish Nichols Fights the San Francisco Fog (Cameron Kids/Abrams, 2022).

Arriving at the dock in Ayala Cove on Angel Island, August 2024.

A few weeks ago I visited Angel Island for the first time since Keeper of the Light was published. It was a beautiful day and the ferry from Tiburon was crowded with people going to Angel Island for a day of hiking, biking and enjoying the out of doors in the state park.

Map of Angel Island. We followed the blue perimeter road to the Immigration Station on the north side of the island.

On all my previous visits to the island I had focused my attention on the southwest side of the island where Juliet’s lighthouse had been located (marked with a yellow X on the map) and where the story of my book takes place. But this time I wanted to visit the former Immigration Station on the other side of the island, where thousands of immigrants, mostly from China, had been detained between 1910, when it was built, and 1940, when it was closed after the main administration building burned down. So, after disembarking at Ayala Cove, Art and I followed the path past the Visitor Center and up the hill to the perimeter road, for a half-hour walk to the entrance of the Immigration Station.

View of Tiburon from the perimeter road. Can you find us in the reflection?

At 12 square miles, Angel Island is the largest island in San Francisco Bay. When Juan Manuel de Ayala y Aranza, the first European to visit the island arrived in 1775, he encountered the indigenous Miwoks, who had been coming there to hunt, fish and gather acorns and other wild plants for thousands of years. Over the next half century, the regional Miwok population was decimated due to resettlement and introduced diseases, and their use of the island as a hunting ground ended. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, California became part of the United States. Two years later the Federal Government became the official owner of Angel Island.

Dormitory in the Detention Barracks as it might have looked while immigrants waited for decisions on their cases. They slept in bunk beds, six between each set of poles.

The Immigration Station on Angel Island opened in 1910. It was the West Coast’s primary immigration facility, where immigrants, mostly from China and Japan, but other countries as well, were brought to be interrogated, often being detained for weeks, months or even years, and in many cases deported. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1882, prohibited most Chinese from immigrating to the U.S. (It was repealed in 1942.)

Detention Barracks are in the upper left of the photo. In the lower left is the large water tank which provided fresh water for cooking and bathing. Both the Detention Barracks and Hospital Monument are now museums.

In 1962, the military left Angel Island and soon after it became a California State Park. The former Immigration Station is now open to the public. In the Detention Barracks Museum you can see rows of narrow bunk beds in the large room where detainees slept, examples of some of the clothing and items they had brought with them, games they played, the guards' office, and more. While most of the detainees at the Immigration Station were men, there were also women and children, who were kept separately. (Note that there is a $5 fee to see the Detention Barracks Museum. It is well worth it!)

Examples of the writing on the wall.

What is most unique about the Detention Barracks Museum is the writing on the wall. Many detainees wrote or carved their thoughts into the wooden walls of the barracks. These inscriptions, many written as poems, form a personal record of their experience and have become a unique and valuable record of the immigrant experience. Over the years, the walls were painted, obscuring the writing. When we first walked into the room we said—but where is the writing?—until the docent showed us by shining her phone light onto the wall to catch the shadows of the engraved characters. Poems were everywhere!

Island of Sadness. You can press the button to hear the poem read aloud.

Signboards provide information about different kinds of Chinese poetry and give examples. And one display allows you to listen to a poem being read aloud in both English and Chinese. When you listen to the Chinese, even if you don't understand the words, you can hear the rhythm and rhyme.

Fog Bell at the Immigration Station Memorial. 

The Immigration Station also had a giant fog bell, much like the one Juliet Nichols rang on that foggy night in 1906. Unlike Juliet’s bell, which is inaccessible, but still in place on the rock where the bell house once stood, the Immigration Station bell is part of a memorial to the immigrants who once came to the island. It has a clapper, which you can swing to make the bell ring. We ate our picnic lunch on a shaded bench next to the bell.

The Immigration Station on Angel Island was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997.

During my visit I finally got to meet Park Interpreter Casey Dexter Lee in person, who had been so helpful with my research for my book. It was a pleasure to talk with her and learn more about Angel Island’s history.

Keeper of the Light is for sale at the kiosk gift shop.

Before we caught the ferry back to Tiburon, I visited the kiosk gift shop near the dock, where I was pleased to see Keeper of the Light displayed. All profits from sales in the gift shop go to support the Angel Island Conservancy.

Ferry landing, Tiburon.

For our visit to Angel Island we had bought our ferry tickets ahead of time online, showing the QR code as we boarded in Tiburon in the morning and where we were given a ticket for the return trip. We made sure to be on time for the 3:20 ferry back to Tiburon, the last trip of the day. If you miss the last ferry you are stuck on the island! And unless you brought camping gear, there is no place to stay. There is a small café in Ayala Cove, but services are limited on the island.

For more information about Angel Island and the Immigration Station check online.

View from inside the Detention Barracks.

For my post about my visit to Angel Island in 2017, click HERE.

ALESUND, NORWAY: An Art Nouveau Gem and Much More

Alesund, Norway. View from the city park.

The last part of our recent trip to Norway was spent in and near the city of Alesund, a small city on Norway’s west coast, once the center of a thriving cod liver oil industry.

On the Alesund waterfront with statue honoring the historic cod fishing industry.

In 1904, most of Alesund was destroyed by a catastrophic fire. With help from other European countries, it was rebuilt, providing the opportunity for new architecture in the Art Nouveau style. Almost every building features some kind of ornament.

Alesund. Art Nouveau inspired house design.

Art Nouveau was a movement within architecture, decorative art, and fine art that took place during the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. In Scandinavia it is known more commonly under the German name Jugenstil. New materials and techniques were explored, and the classical models of the past were abandoned in favor of creative forms of expression inspired by the organic vitality of nature. 

In the Alesund Art Nouveau Centre, everything--from furniture and window treatments, to wallpaper and doorknobs--is in the Art Nouveau style. 

Spiral staircase in the Alesund Art Nouveau Centre.

The Alesund Art Nouveau Centre, housed in historic buildings near the port, tells of the fire and its aftermath, and displays examples of Art Nouveau furniture and home decoration.

Bookcase.

Viking inspired silver baskets. 

The Fiskemuseet (Fishing Museum) in Alesund is also worth a visit. Exhibits, some with life-size figures, show how cod were processed to produce the rich oil, a source of vitamins A and D. I remember that when I was a child my mother put cod liver oil in my orange juice and how I hated the fishy taste.

Historic photos and containers of cod liver oil at the Fiskemuseet.

Many people come to Alesund for trips into the fjords, and before we came to Norway we had thought we would like to do that. But it turned out that our days in Alesund didn’t coordinate with the days of the boat tour. So we adapted our plans.

Former lighthouse at Alesund Harbor, now the honeymoon suite of a local hotel.

On our third day in Alesund we took a local bus to the Sunnmore Museum, a collection of 40 historic houses and other buildings resituated in a large park, as well a museum of boats, including several from Viking times.

Boathouse at Sunnemore Museum.

Graveyard of the Borgund Church, Sunnemore

It was a beautiful spring day, warm, and flowers were blooming.

People in National Dress at Sunnemore, on their way to a reception in a historic meeting hall.

As we walked around Sunnmore, we noticed groups of people in the traditional Norwegian dress—women in long embroidered skirts and men in dark suits. Even children and babies were wearing the national dress. While Norwegians don’t wear such clothing on a daily basis, it is apparently usual to wear the traditional clothing for confirmations and other special events. 

National dress, in store at shopping mall in Alesund.

Later, when we went into the shopping mall near our hotel, we saw the dresses and accompanying accessories on display.

Traditional design wall decoration, historic farmhouse at Sunnemore Museum. 

Our final excursion from Alesund was to nearby Runde Island to see the nesting seabirds. For more about that, go to my post of May 20, 2024 .

On Runde Island..

Norway is a big country and in the two weeks we were there we only saw a small part of it. But our visits to three cities—Oslo, Bergen, and Alesund—gave us a good taste of the landscape, culture, people, food, weather. We’d like to go back someday to experience more.

Art Deco window decoration, Alesund. 

  

POINT PINOS LIGHTHOUSE, PACIFIC GROVE, CA: Emily Fish, Socialite Keeper

Point Pinos Lighthouse, Pacific Grove, CA

The Point Pinos lighthouse in Pacific Grove, California, (near Monterey) opened for business on February 1, 1855 and has been a guiding light for ships along the Central Pacific coast ever since. It is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the Western United States. On a sunny Saturday in late August, Art and I made a day trip from Oakland to visit the lighthouse. (It had been closed to visitors during the pandemic and recently opened to the public.) Walking on the grounds is free. Tickets for inside tours of the lighthouse led by volunteer docents are available in the gift shop. .

Sometime after 1899, Light Keeper Emily Fish stands near the front entrance, and her servant is to the right in the kitchen garden. Photo courtesy of Pat Hathaway Collection.

I was particularly interested in visiting the Point Pinos Lighthouse because its most famous light keeper (from 1893 to 1914) was Emily Fish, the mother of Juliet Fish Nichols, the subject of my recent picture book biography for children, KEEPER OF THE LIGHT: Juliet Fish Nichols Fights the San Francisco Fog. Juliet was the light keeper at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay from 1902 to 1914. Emily and Juliet were an unusual mother/daughter light keeper duo, but with different personalities. Juliet led a quiet life at her lighthouse isolated at the bottom of a cliff on an island, whereas Emily was known as the “Socialite Keeper” due to her love of entertaining at her lighthouse.

Emily's bedroom on the second floor of the Point Pinos lighthouse.

Unlike the lighthouse at Point Knox on Angel Island, which was torn down, the Point Pinos lighthouse has been maintained both as a functioning lighthouse (now with a state-of-the-art beacon at the top) and as a historical monument. It is maintained by local volunteers. Most of the building is furnished in the style of the early 20^th century, as it would have been when Emily Fish lived there. (Emily’s belongings were lost after she retired.)

An information panel in the parlor gives a brief description of Emily: "In 1893, Mrs. Malancthon W. Fish (Emily), recently widowed, arrived to take over the job of keeper at Point Pinos. She brought her Chinese servant and a taste for the finer things in life.…Lawns, flowers, hedges, trees and fountains appeared. Fashionable furniture filled the rooms and visitors from near and far would join her for tea. She was a tough boss, going through over thirty assistants in twenty years. Retiring at 71, she and her faithful servant moved to a house in Pacific Grove, where they lived until Emily’s death in 1931."

View across Monterey Bay toward Santa Cruz from the second floor of the lighthouse.

Like keepers at other light houses, Emily recorded the weather and activities at her lighthouse in her log. Sample pages from her log are on display by the second floor window of the lighthouse, which looks out toward the sea. The lighthouse sits on a knoll that provides a good view of the water but is safely away from dangerous waves during a storm.

Sample log entry: Five ladies and a boy were cut off by high tide on the Point. Two of the party called for aid. I sent a stout plank, a rope and the laborer to get them off safely at sunset. Otherwise they would have had to remain until midnight for the low tide. July 31, 1899, Emily Fish, Keeper

Rooms at the back of the lighthouse include the kitchen and bathroom, furnished in an early 20th century style. The only room in the house not in keeping with Emily's time is upstairs over the parlor. It is devoted to WW II mementos, including a newspaper report of the sighting of Japanese submarines off the coast.

Foghorn on display in the parlor.

We were lucky to have a sunny day and clear skies on the day of our visit to the lighthouse. On foggy nights an automated horn blew to warn ships away from the rocky coast. In addition, buoys anchored in the ocean had bells that also served as warnings. 

Ocean buoy.

The buoy on display outside the lighthouse is similar to the red one located in the ocean to the north of Point Pinos. It marks the southern entrance to Monterey Bay. Normally it would have a bell and a light. Buoys warn of danger and serve as navigational tools.

Stairway to light tower. View into room with WW II mementos.

The light on top of the Point Pinos lighthouse still sends its bright beams across the bay--now from a LED lamp. It is completely automated and there is no need for a lightkeeper. The light is maintained by the Coast Guard. Visitors can peek up the narrow stairway of the light tower, but the top is closed to visitors.

Blog post on TIT about Angel Island:

ANGEL ISLAND IN SAN FRANCISCO BAY: A Trip Through Time, Sept 2017

My book KEEPER OF THE LIGHT: Juliet Fish Nichols Fights the San Francisco Fog is available on Amazon.

For more about Emily Fish's daughter, Juliet Nichols, her log, Angel Island, the Point Knox Lighthouse, 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and more go to https://carolinearnoldart.blogspot.com/p/extra-material-for-keeper-of-light.html .

 

MOROCCO: GARDENS AND MORE Part II, Guest Post by Susan Kean

Cape Spartel lighthouse.

I thank my good friend Susan Kean for sharing her excellent photographs and impressions of her recent trip to Morocco. This is a continuation of Part I, which posted last week.

Beautiful streets of Tangier.

The last part of our visit to Morocco was spent in Tangier in the North on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. A beautiful town with European influence--since it’s literally almost only a stone’s throw from Portugal/Spain and Gibraltar.

Courtyard of El Minzah hotel. Our room was on the second floor.

We stayed in a traditional modernized Hotel El Minzah, which was good.

Lord’s Prayer written in Arabic around the arch in the sanctuary of St. Andrew's Church..

Our first day we visited a public garden and then were taken to St Andrews Church, which was a gift from the King of Morocco to Queen Victoria. 

George signs condolence book for Queen.

Those who wished could sign the condolence book for the Queen, which the Ambassador was going to deliver to London the following day.

Straits of Gibraltar. Atlantic to the left; Mediterranean to the right.

Next day, a visit to the Cape Spartel lighthouse, which is at the junction of the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea… the Straits of Gibraltar.

Rohuna garden. It was a long walk to get there!

Followed by a visit to the Rahuna Garden, the result of a dream of writer/ horticulturalist Umberto Pasti.

Inside the American Legation Museum. This was a representation of a battle that interested George greatly, where the Moroccans chased out the Portuguese in 1578!

Welcome to US Legation Museum. Embassy moved to Rabat and philanthropic US folks decided to keep this beautiful building Lots more to the story!

Last day we spent at the American Legation Museum and a glorious private garden owned and designed by New Zealander,Veere Grenney.

Gazebo Garden, our last spot.

 

Check out these other posts for more about Morocco at The Intrepid Tourist:

Marrakech, Fes and Rabat, By Kathryn Mohrmn  

16 Days in Morocco Part 1, By Tom and Susan Weisner  

16  Days in Morocco, Part 2, By Tom and Susan Weisner