Modern Use
In 1938, hearings concerning charges of membership in a proscribed political party against labor leader Harry Bridges were held on Angel Island before Dean James Landis of Harvard Law School. After eleven weeks of testimony that filled nearly 8,000 pages, Landis found in favor of Bridges. The decision was accepted by the United States Department of Labor and Bridges was freed.
In 1954, the State Park Commission authorized California State Parks to purchase 37 acres (15 ha) around Ayala Cove, marking the birth of Angel Island State Park. Additional acreage was purchased four years later, in 1958. The last federal Department of Defense personnel withdrew in 1962, turning over the entire island as a state park in December of the same year.
There is one active United States Coast Guard lighthouse on the island at Point Blunt. The lighthouse at Point Stuart has been disestablished.
Read more about this topic: Angel Island (California)
Famous quotes containing the word modern:
“Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and make no one happy when they are finished.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness ... is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase “the pursuit of happiness” is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.”
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990)