Fort William Historical Park Campground

We spent three nights in Thunder Bay following our trip around the north shore of Lake Superior. We used our Thunder Bay stop to get groceries and catch up on the internet after a week in the wilds of Ontario. We considered both Kakabeka Provincial Park and the Thunder Bay KOA, but ultimately chose the campground at Ontario Provincial Park’s Fort William Historical Park because we heard good things and it was relatively inexpensive. We couldn’t have been happier.

The campground is located on the grounds of Ontario's Fort William Historical Park and is managed by the park staff. The sites are not particularly well marked, but easy to decipher due to location of electrical and water risers. All the sites are located in a large grassy area on the historical park’s grounds and are within easy (5-min) walking distance to the Fort's Visitor Center. The Fort is an easy commute to both downtown Thunder Bay (15-min), and the beautiful Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park (20-min). The staff was super friendly and overall it wasn’t that busy. Each night of our stay, we saw about four or five rigs pull in for the evening. There were only two or three other rigs in the park for more than one night during our three night stay.

There are approximately 64 listed sites, with about 17 of them having electric and water. All sites are long and situated in full sun (basically, it’s a big grassy parking lot) and dry camping with solar would be very easy. Side-to-side, the sites are pretty close together, but the staff seemed to do a good job of reserving them so when we did have someone next door to us, it was only for a single night stay.

The campground has bathrooms and showers that are located in two trailers near the camping area entrance/exit. While the facilities were a bit janky due to being located in trailers, they were always clean and we saw the staff cleaning and inspecting them several times during the day. In fact, we saw the staff drive through the camping area at least a dozen times per day. The entire Fort William complex has awesome WiFi and a strong LTE signal from Rogers (although we are AT&T and didn't use it). There is a dump station available, but it is located on a pull-off on the side of the main access road between the campground and the Fort's visitor center.

Price-wise, the camp sites were fairly reasonable: Non-serviced (dry camping) sites $CAN 25/night + HST Serviced sites (50/30/20amp and water) $CAN 35/night + HST. We paid about $US for our "Serviced" site.

If they had actual brick and mortar bathhouses, we would have given the place 5-stars, but the trailer bathrooms/showers were perfectly fine and functional with good water temperature and pressure.

Regarding the Fort: We spent one full day at the historic park and it was fantastic. Although not as big as Colonial Williamsburg, Fort William was much more enjoyable and a lot cheaper. While we didn’t count the other visitors, I would estimate that during our Thursday in late-June visit, there were only about 100-150 other people visiting throughout the day. Our eight-year-old loved the fort and had a great time with the interpreters/re-enactors and was encouraged to touch things and try his hand at various activities (i.e., playing lacroose, making bread, throwing an axe!) There is also a planetarium and telescope on-site, but we only attended a day-time Sun program and it wasn’t very good. We talked to another couple in the campground and they attended an evening program (very late because in late-June, the it was still light out at 11pm) and said it was merely, “ok.” They said the mosquitoes were really bad at the planetarium though.

This is a very small campground a few hundred yards from the visitor center. The sites are grass but are pretty level. You share water and electric on the same post as your neighbor, so your connections might be on your opposite side. The sites are all pull thru. The rest rooms and the shower's are in portable units that are very nice. I recommend taking the tour of Fort William it is very interesting.