‘Ellis Island West’
July 27, 2007
A gold rush participant in San Francisco wrote his sister on April 27, 1850 that he
and some friends took an excursion to Angel Island. I was intrigued by a reference
to the island in 1850 and enjoyed the description.
The writer, a man from New Haven, Connecticutt named John McCrackan, described it as three miles in circumference with high banks, not level shoreline. When he saw it that spring, it was covered with flowers. It had groves of trees, and he saw deer, elk and a lot of rabbits.