The cumulative and ongoing effects of immigration on the Pacific Coast are staggeringly complex and infinitely subtle. From 1910 to 1940, Angel Island was the processing and detention center for hundreds of thousands of immigrants entering the United States, mainly from Asia. The National Park Service’s “Angel Island Immigration Station Museum” now tells the stories of the people who came to the West Coast, as a bookend to the Ellis Island Museum of immigration to the East Coast.

The successful museum launch required NPS to work closely with stakeholders and the community to focus the museum, determine which peoples coming from which places to include and how to tell their stories, shape the visitor experience of the museum, reuse existing structures and develop the funding.