Fort Ontario State Historic Site today is a star-shaped fort dating to the early 1840's with 1863 to 1872 improvements. The fort is open to the public in the summer, and is undergoing renovations to its two officer's quarters; one is unfurnished but there is a video showing the rooms as they appeared with furniture. There are two Guardhouses, a Powder Magazine, Storehouse, Enlisted Men's Barracks, and windswept ramparts featuring magnificent views of Lake Ontario and underground stone casemates and galleries to tour. The fourth and current Fort Ontario is built on the ruins of three earlier fortifications dating to the French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, and War of 1812. It was occupied by the U.S. Army through World War II. From 1944 to 1946 the fort served as the only refugee camp in the United States for mostly Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust under an Executive Order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A post cemetery containing the graves of 77 officers, soldiers, women, and children.
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