Between 1892 and 1924, approximately 12 million men, women, and children first set foot on U.S. soil at this 27½-acre island's federal immigration facility. By the time Ellis Island closed in 1954, it had processed the ancestors of more than 40% of Americans living today. The island's main building, now a national monument, reopened in 1990 as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. More than 30 galleries of artifacts, photographs, and taped oral histories chronicle the immigrant experience, from what someone's native village was like to where a particular national group took root in America and what industries employed them. Check at the visitors desk for free film tickets, ranger tour times, or special programs. You can rent an audio guide or follow a ranger tour up to the white-tiled Registry Room (Great Hall), where immigrants awaited processing and inspectors screened out "undesirables" -- unmarried women, the utterly destitute, and people suffering from contagious diseases. The ground-level Railroad Ticket Office has several interactive exhibits and three-dimensional representations on the Peopling of America. At a computer terminal in the American Family Immigration Center, you can search Ellis Island's records for your own ancestors (a $5 fee). Outdoors is the American Immigrant Wall of Honor, where the names of more than 500,000 immigrant Americans are inscribed along a promenade facing the Manhattan skyline. The names include Miles Standish, Priscilla Alden, George Washington's grandfather, Irving Berlin -- it's possible to add a family member's name to the wall, too. COST: Free.