Angel Island’s Military History

Abandoned Fort McDowell - Angel Island

Fort McDowell Barracks and Mess Hall

Fort McDowell Officers Row

Battery Drew - Angel Island

Nike Missile Period

After visiting the Immigration Center on Angel Island, we continued our walk around the Island’s perimeter road – next stop, Fort McDowell.  Fort McDowell began as a detention camp in 1898 for soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War.  In 1910 and 1911, Fort McDowell was expanded into a major facility for receiving recruits and processing military personnel for overseas assignments.  Construction included a huge 600-man barracks, a mess hall, and a hospital.  It was a busy camp during WWI with four thousand men per month passing through Fort McDowell on Angel Island.  When WWII began, Fort McDowell was one of three sites in the San Francisco Embarkation system; more than 300,000 soldiers were shipped to the Pacific from Fort McDowell alone.  When the War came to a close, military action began to diminish and the flag was lowered at Fort McDowell for the last time in August of 1946.  Today, Fort McDowell looks like a ghost town with numerous abandoned concrete buildings, missing windows, and empty play fields.  The houses along Officers Row, the Hospital, and the Chapel stand silent overlooking the compound.  Only a couple homes are occupied by Angel Island Park Staff. We continued our walk along the narrow road above the steep cliffs, reaching the south side of the Island with beautiful views of Alcatraz and the San Francisco Skyline.  We passed by the current Coast Guard Station and an old Nike Site.  Angel Island was one of nineteen Missile Sites in the Bay Area from 1954-1961.  The Army dismantled the installation in 1962 but we could still see three notches in the hillside that were made to improve the line of sight with a radar control station placed on Angel Island’s Mt. Livermore.  As we approached the southwest side of the Island, we came upon three Endicott Battery emplacements.  Battery Drew was the first Endicott Battery on Angel Island built in 1898, construction began just three weeks before the start of the Spanish-American War.  The construction of two additional batteries soon followed; one was built on the site of the old Point Knox Civil War battery.  Rounding the Island to the west, we stopped to visit Camp Reynolds.  Camp Reynolds was established in 1863 due to the mounting threats to the Bay Area from Confederate sympathizers and the concern of possible naval attacks.  After the Civil War, Camp Reynolds became an infantry camp for recruits and a staging area for campaigns against the Apache, Sioux, Modoc, and other Indian tribes.  There were over 200 soldiers by 1876 and a complete camp including a chapel, bakery, blacksmith, shoemaker, laundry, barber, trading store, and a resident photographer in addition to barracks, officers quarters, and a large warehouse.  Today the windows of the chapel and officers quarters are boarded up, looking like ghosts from the past.  The enlisted men’s barracks were taken down by the Army in the 1930’s.  Fortunately, the Warehouse and Bakery are open to the public and the Commanders house serves as the Visitor Center for Camp Reynolds.  We left the Camp still frozen in time and continued our walk north, arriving back at Ayala Cove where we had started our historic tour of Angel Island.  It was nearing dusk as we made our way across Richardson Bay to Sausalito, our dinghy rode over steep waves that were kicked up by the wind, a daily afternoon occurrence in San Francisco Bay.

Camp Reynolds Officers Row

Camp Reynolds Warehouse

Camp Reynolds Chapel