How Did Ellis Island Contribute To The Hudson River

Ellis Island: Its History to the Hudson River and America

At its inception, Ellis Island was a response to the rising number of European immigrants seeking to begin new lives in the land of promise. From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island a small island in New York Bay, served as the main point of entry for immigrants to the United States. The Hudson River was the main gateway for these immigrants and the diffusion of their culture to the Hudson River Valley, and in the end, the country.

With the opening of Ellis Island, previous points of entry in Manhattan and in New Jersey would be closed down. The Hudson River now served as the passage route which led to Ellis Island, an immigration center, in which settlers landed in the United States. Once arriving at Ellis Island immigrants would endure intensive processing of questions, and

According to Ellis Island History in the thirty-five years before Ellis Island opened, over eight million immigrants had been processed by New York State officials at Castle Garden Immigration Depot in lower Manhattan, just across the bay. It is estimated that ten and a half million immigrants departed from points across the United States from the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal across a narrow strait. Others would have used one of the other terminals along the Hudson River at that time. Many traveled into our great nation at the mouth of the Hudson. Ellis Island became, in many ways, the focal point of New York City in these years, and of the Hudson River. Settlers and immigrants flocked into the lower New York counties, namely Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Dutchess and expanded the populations of towns such as Ossining, Peekskill, Hartsdale, Yonkers and Poughkeepsie. As they did this they also brought their cultures with them. (History of Westchester County, New York, Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York