Day 797: Statue of Liberty NM, Ellis Island, Castle Clinton NM, African Burial Ground NM, Federal Hall NM

Today we left Monsey early and drove down to Liberty State Park in New Jersey, where we parked the truck and walked to the ferry that would take us to Ellis Island, a unit of Statue of Liberty National Monument:

The abandoned train station at Liberty State Park:

I was turned back at security because I had my Leatherman with me, so I hid it in the jetty rocks next to the ferry terminal. We boarded the ferry and could see New Jersey on the left and Manhattan on the right:

The new One World Trade Center dominates the skyline:

Ellis Island:

This staircase was used by immigrants after being released by immigration authorities:

The great hall, where immigrants were processed:

We saw the park video and browsed one of the exhibit spaces, enjoying the old posters which included Yiddish:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks, but the park is out of badges, so they were given a Junior Ranger sticker. The park will mail the badges to us when they arrive at the park:

Back outside:

The hospital buildings:

It turns out Ellis Island would take a whole day to fully explore, so we had to say goodbye much sooner than we would have liked, but the ferry was coming to take us to the Statue of Liberty:

So long, Ellis Island:

Liberty Island includes statues of prominent figures in the creation of the Statue and its relocation to the US:

A scale model of the torch:

A scale model of Lady Liberty’s face:

Early models for the statue:

This apparatus allows the enlargement of the original scale model to the final, actual size statue:

Copper sheeting was pounded into wooden forms:

Steel straps are used to attach the copper sheeting to the statue’s superstructure:

We walked up to the pedestal viewing area:

Back down on the ground:

Like at Ellis Island, the kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks, but the park is out of badges, so they were given a Junior Ranger sticker. The park will mail the badges to us when they arrive at the park:

We boarded the ferry that would take us to Manhattan. It was much more crowded than the New Jersey ferry:

We arrived in Battery Park on the southern end of Manhattan Island and visited Castle Clinton National Monument:

Castle Clinton was built as a defensive fort, then was used as a opera hall, an immigration center prior to the opening of Ellis Island, and finally as an aquarium. The NPS has restored the structure to its original appearance:

Inside the fort:

The fort contains a small visitor center:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks received their badges:

We walked north, passing the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street:

We arrived at African Burial Ground National Monument, which preserves a portion of a 17th- and 18th-century African American burial ground accidentally discovered in 1991 during the building of a government building:

This diagram shows a top-down view of the grave distribution:

Photographs of the discovered graves. Over 400 graves were discovered in the excavated portion of the burial grounds, leading archeologists to estimate that over 15,000 graves are located in the burial ground, which today is under a dozen or so square blocks of Manhattan:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

Walking through Manhattan:

Our next stop was Federal Hall National Memorial, site of Washington’s inauguration and location of the US Capitol from 1789 to 1790. One of the artifacts on display is the Bible used in Washington’s inauguration: