The federal government opened its new immigration processing center on Ellis Island, replacing the old state-run facility at Castle Garden. Annie Moore, traveling with her two younger brothers to reunite with parents already in New York, stepped off the ferry and became the very first of more than 12 million immigrants who would pass through the island's halls over the next six decades.
Annie Moore had turned fifteen only that day, having crossed the Atlantic aboard the steamship Nevada with her brothers Anthony and Philip. Their parents had emigrated years earlier to build a life in Manhattan's Lower East Side, saving enough to bring their children across. As she stepped onto the wooden dock, an official reportedly presented her with a ten-dollar gold coin, the first American money she had ever seen, and declared her the historic first arrival.
Ellis Island's opening marked a turning point in American immigration policy, shifting oversight from individual states to the federal government amid a surge of arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe. The wooden main building burned down in 1897, destroying most early records, and was rebuilt in the grand red-brick and limestone style still recognizable today.
Annie Moore herself never moved west as legend once claimed; she stayed in New York, married a German-American baker, and died in 1924, still living within a few miles of the island where her American story began. Her statue now stands at both Ellis Island and Cobh, Ireland, the port from which she departed.