Ellis Island is known best as the historical gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. Ellis Island was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 to 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the site of Fort Gibson and later a naval magazine. It became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965, and since 1990, hosts a museum of immigration run by the National Park Service. A 1998 US Supreme Court decision found most of the island to be part of New Jersey.
A myth persists that government officials on Ellis Island compelled immigrants to take new names against their wishes.In fact, no historical records bear this out. Federal immigration inspectors were under strict supervision and were more interested in preventing inadmissible aliens from entering the country (which they were held accountable for) than in assisting them in trivial personal matters such as altering their names. The first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island was Annie Moore. She was 14 and from Cork, Ireland, who arrived on the ship Nevada on January 2, 1892. She and her two brothers were coming to America to meet their parents, who had moved to New York two years prior. The last person to pass through Ellis Island was a Norwegian merchant seaman by the name of Arne Peterssen in 1954.
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