Ellis Island

After our voyage to the top of the Statue of Liberty, Josh and I took the ferry to Ellis Island, which I had never seen. It was interesting (but slightly boring). Here are some highlights:

The sign at the entrance

The main building and museum

Me, pac-manning the Native American tribes from Oregon

(I was trying to show Josh which tribes I saw most often at NARA)

This flag includes images of faces. Depending on where you're standing, you can see more faces or more flag. 

A map representing Spanish Americans in the US.

Only 75,772 (417 in Oregon), and Josh is one of them!

We went outside to see the wall with names of immigrants, and saw the dilapidated wing of the main building. Later, we discovered that this was used to house baggage.

Interestingly, neither Josh nor I have relatives (that we are aware of) that came through Ellis Island. My people came over with the Mayflower-era immigrants, and Josh's people were conquistadorrrrrrrrrrrs. (That was me rolling my "r"s). It may have been more powerful if we had been able to find names of our relatives on the wall of immigrant names, but we still had a good time.

Upstairs, the people-sorting room.

A dorm room. Those are beds(!)

There was an extremely interesting exhibit about the restoration of Ellis Island. This is some of the furniture that was found (a piano?) It is amazing to me that something so historically-relevant like Ellis Island could just sit vacant, but it happens all the time.

Other outbuildings (not part of the museum)

Here are some more pictures from the Statue of Liberty that I neglected to post:

The original torch

Josh next to a reproduction of Lady Liberty's face (only 8 ft tall)

Now that I've discovered my huge neglect in posting about our trips to Texas, SoCal, and Utah, expect a surge in posts about past adventures.