 
• Free Immigration Record Lookups
•  An Ellis Island Experience
•  Tips for Finding your Immigrant Ancestors
•  Ellis Island: Doorway to Dreams
Today's visitors to Ellis Island, although unencumbered by bundled possessions and the harrowing memory of a transatlantic
journey, retrace the steps of twelve million immigrants who approached America's "front doors to freedom" in the early
twentieth century. Ellis Island receives today's arriving ferry passengers as it did hundreds of thousands of new arrivals
between 1892 and 1954. In place of the business-like machinery of immigration inspection, the restored Main Hall now houses
the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, dedicated to commemorating the immigrants' stories of trepidation and triumph, courage
and rejection, and the lasting image of the American dream.
During its peak years-1900 to 1914 Ellis Island received thousands of immigrants a day. Each was scrutinized for disease
or disability as the long line of hopeful new arrivals made their way up the steep stairs to the great, echoing Registry
Room. Over 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry in the United States to a man, woman, or child whose name passed
from a steamship manifest sheet to an inspector's record book in the great Registry Room at Ellis Island.
With restrictions on immigration in the 1920s Ellis Island's population dwindled, and the station finally closed its
doors in 1954. Its grand brick and limestone buildings gradually deteriorated in the fierce weather of New York Harbor.
Concern about this vital part of America's immigrant history led to the inclusion of Ellis Island as part of Statue of
Liberty National Monument in 1965.
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