Cite as: 523 U. S. 767 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
under the Compact rendered any statement of "Ellis Island, New York" equivocal, without more, for prescriptive purposes, and the National Government's occupation tended to limit the notice to New Jersey of such acts as New York did perform. To weigh New York's evidence with an appreciation of these twin hurdles is not, as Justice Stevens charges, to resort to hypertechnicality, but to recognize that New York has a substantial burden to establish that it gave good notice to New Jersey of its designs on the made land. We accordingly examine the evidence of prescriptive activity that New York did serve up, which is closer to famine than feast. It falls into four principal categories.
1
There is some evidence that New York recorded vital statistics of people on the Island. The record contains New York certificates recording five births that probably occurred on the filled portions of the Island,14 22 New York certificates recording deaths on the Island, all but one of which are from a single 4-month period in 1924, and five 15 marriage certificates, four from 1901 and one from 1914.16 For a period of
14 New York also presented evidence of 17 birth certificates recording births before the 1897 fire on the Island. These certificates are not evidence of prescription, however, because New York failed to show that these births took place on the original Island; nothing in the record indicates where the hospital was located in 1897.
15 There are actually six certificates in evidence, but one is a duplicate.
16 The marriage certificates are augmented by Edward Corsi's interview of an Island employee named Frank Martocci, who recalled "numberless" weddings on the Island (said to have been solemnized under New York law) until the policy of marrying immigrants on the Island was dropped and the immigrants were brought to City Hall in New York instead. N. Y. Exh. 74, p. 409 (E. Corsi, In the Shadow of Liberty: The Chronicle of Ellis Island 87 (1935)). One of New York's witnesses, Harlan Unrau, the historian for the National Park Service, testified that Fiorello La Guardia's memoirs also describe trips to and from the Island to Manhattan to tie the knot. Tr. 3615-3618 (Aug. 8, 1996). This evidence amounts to little in the absence of recording, and at most would show that immigrants undomi-
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