J. Gordon Frierson MD - Guarding the Golden Gate: A History of the U.S. Quarantine Station in San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is one of the most striking in the world. Formed by the outpouring of sixteen rivers flowing down from the Sierra Nevada, it covers about four hundred square miles within an undulating shoreline. Its waters course to the Pacific Ocean through a relatively narrow passage, flanked on each side by imposing bluffs, known as the Golden Gate. In the years before 1848, traffic through the Golden Gate was sparse. Beautiful as it was, there was little within the Bay to attract visitors arriving by sea.

This peaceful state of affairs changed, though, as news of the discovery of gold in the California hills flew around the globe. Soon thousands of frenzied visitors passed between the bluffs in a rush for riches. The stampede of fortune-seekers transformed San Francisco from a sleepy village into a bustling city. A decade or two later, as the allure of gold waned, newer immigrants descended the gangplanks of incoming vessels to seek work on railroads, in farming, and in other enterprises. San Francisco absorbed the newcomers and grew rapidly, assisted in no small part by its accessible harbor.

The accelerating numbers of ships from Asian and South American harbors inevitably brought a few passengers who had sickened on the way. Some suffered from diseases such as smallpox and cholera, maladies that were prevalent in many ports and were feared in California. Efforts to keep epidemic diseases from stepping ashore in San Francisco included the institution of quarantine measures. Quarantine, defined as the holding in isolation of persons suffering from, or exposed to, contagious disease for a period of time until the danger of transmitting the disease has passed, was an old practice and a feature of most busy ports.

This book tells the story of the US quarantine station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay: the Angel Island Quarantine Station. At the time the Station opened, 1891, diseases such as smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, typhus, and plague ravaged various parts of the globe. Before the modern era of antibiotics and vaccinations, these scourges, if brought by arriving ship passengers, posed imminent threats to San Franciscos population. The atmosphere of fear was heightened by the fact that the scientific world knew little about how epidemic diseases were transmitted. Isolation of sick people, however, seemed a sensible way to prevent spread. Consequently, health officials searched for a site where new arrivals with contagious disease, and those exposed to them, could be removed from contact with the general population and undergo a period of quarantine. An island provided the ideal setting.

San Francisco Bay Area, showing major landmarks present when the station opened.

Several islands lie scattered in the Bay.