Mackinac Island is an island covering 3.8 square miles in land area in the Upper Peninsula. It is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The island was home to a Native American settlement before European exploration began in the 17th century. It served a strategic position amidst the commerce of the Great Lakes fur trade. This led to the establishment of Fort Mackinac on the island by the British during the American Revolutionary War. It was the scene of two battles during the War of 1812.
In the late 19th century, Mackinac Island became a popular tourist attraction and summer colony. Much of the island has undergone extensive historical preservation and restoration; as a result, the entire island is listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is well known for its numerous cultural events; its wide variety of architectural styles, including the famous Victorian Grand Hotel; and its ban on almost all motor vehicles. More than 80 percent of the island is preserved as Mackinac Island State Park.
Description
Mackinac Island is about 8 miles (13 km) in circumference and 3.8 square miles (9.8 km2) in total area. The highest point of the island is the historic Fort Holmes (originally called Fort George by the British before 1815), which is 320 feet (98 m) above lake level and 890 feet (271 m) above sea level. According to the 2010 census, the island has a year-round population of 492. The population grows considerably during the summer as hotels, restaurants, bars and retail shops, open only during the summer season, hire short-term employees to accommodate as many as 15,000 visitors per day.
The island can be reached by private boat, by ferry, by small aircraft, and in the winter, by snowmobile. The airport has a 3,500-foot (1,070 m) paved runway, and charter air service from the mainland is available. In the summer tourist season, ferry service is available from Arnold Transit Company, Shepler’s Ferry, and Star Line Ferry to shuttle visitors to the island from St. Ignace and Mackinaw City.
Motorized vehicles have been prohibited on the island since 1898, with the exception of snowmobiles during winter, emergency vehicles, and service vehicles. Travel on the island is either by foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn carriage. Roller skates and roller blades are also allowed, except in the downtown area. Bicycles, roller skates/roller blades, carriages, and saddle horses are available for rent. An 8-mile (13 km) road follows the island’s perimeter, and numerous roads, trails and paths cover the interior. The road encircling the island and closely hugging the shoreline is M-185, the United States’ only state highway without motorized vehicles.
The island is the location of Mackinac Island State Park, which covers approximately 80 percent of the island and includes Fort Mackinac as well as portions of the island’s historic downtown and harbor. No camping is allowed on the island, but numerous hotels and bed and breakfasts are available.
The downtown streets are lined with many retail stores, candy shops, and restaurants. A popular item at the candy shops is the locally produced and nationally known “Mackinac Island Fudge”, leading to tourists sometimes being referred to as “fudgies”. Many shops sell a variety of fudge, and some of the confectioners have been operating for more than a century. The popularity of the fudge has led to the sales and marketing of Mackinac Island fudge not only throughout Michigan, but outside the state as well.
History
Archaeologists have excavated prehistoric fishing camps on Mackinac Island and in the surrounding areas. Fishhooks, pottery, and other artifacts establish a Native American presence at least 700 years before European exploration, around AD 900. The island is a sacred place in the tradition of some of its earliest known inhabitants, the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) tribes, who consider it to be home to the Gitche Manitou, or the “Great Spirit”. According to legend, Mackinac Island was created by the Great Hare, Michabou and was the first land to appear after the recession of the Great Flood.The island was a gathering place for the local tribes where their offerings were made to Gitche Manitou and was where tribal chiefs were buried.
The first European likely to have seen Mackinac Island is Jean Nicolet, a French-Canadian coureur de bois, during his 1634 explorations. The Jesuit priest Claude Dablon founded a mission for the Native Americans on Mackinac Island in 1670, and stayed over the winter of 1670–71. Dablon’s fall 1671 successor, the missionary and explorer Jacques Marquette, moved the mission to St. Ignace soon after his arrival. With the mission as a focus, the Straits of Mackinac quickly became an important French fur trading location. The British took control of the Straits of Mackinac after the French and Indian War and Major Patrick Sinclair chose the bluffs of the island for Fort Mackinac in 1780.
Although the British built Fort Mackinac to protect their settlement from attack by French-Canadians and native tribes, the fort was never attacked during the American Revolutionary War, and the entire Straits area was officially acquired by the United States through the Treaty of Paris in 1783. However, much of the British forces did not leave the Great Lakes area until after Jay’s Treaty established U.S. sovereignty over the Northwest Territory in 1794. During the War of 1812, the British captured the fort in the first battle of the conflict because the Americans had not yet heard that war had been declared. The victorious British attempted to protect their prize by building Fort George on the high ground behind Fort Mackinac. In 1814, the Americans and British fought a second battle on the north side of the island. The American second-in-command, Major Andrew Hunter Holmes, was killed and the Americans failed to recapture the island.
Despite this outcome, the Treaty of Ghent forced the British to return the island and surrounding mainland to the U.S. in 1815. The United States reoccupied Fort Mackinac, and renamed Fort George Fort Holmes, after Major Holmes. Fort Mackinac remained under the control of the United States government until 1895 and provided volunteers to defend the Union during the American Civil War. The fort even served as a prison for three Confederate sympathizers.
John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company was centered on Mackinac Island after the War of 1812 and exported beaver pelts for thirty years. By the middle of the 19th century, commercial fishing for whitefish and lake trout began to replace the fur trade as the island’s primary industry. As sport fishing became more popular in the 1880s, hotels and restaurants accommodated tourists coming by train or lake boat from Detroit and similar cities.
Following the Civil War, the island became a popular tourist destination for residents of cities on the Great Lakes. Much of the federal land on Mackinac Island was designated as the second national park, Mackinac National Park, in 1875, just three years after Yellowstone was designated as the first national park. To accommodate an influx of tourists in the 1880s, the boat and railroad companies built hotels, including the Grand Hotel. Souvenir shops began to spring up as a way for island residents to profit from the tourists. Many wealthy industrialists built summer cottages along the island’s bluffs for extended stays. When the federal government left the island in 1895, all of the federal land, including Fort Mackinac, was given to the state of Michigan and became Michigan’s first state park. The Mackinac Island State Park Commission appointed to oversee the island has limited private development in the park and requires leaseholders to maintain the island’s distinctive Victorian architecture.
Motor vehicles were restricted at the end of the 19th century because of concerns for the health and safety of the island’s residents and horses after local carriage drivers complained that automobiles startled their horses. This ban continues to the present with exceptions only for emergency and construction vehicles.
Etymology
Like many historic places in the Great Lakes region, Mackinac Island’s name derives from a Native American language. Native Americans in the Straits of Mackinac region likened the shape of the island to that of a turtle. Therefore, they named it “Mitchimakinak” (Ojibwe mishi-mikinaak) meaning “big turtle”. The French used a version of the original pronunciation: Michilimackinac. However, the English shortened it to the present name: “Mackinac.”
Geography
Mackinac Island was formed as the glaciers of the last ice age began to melt around 13,000 BC. The bedrock strata that underlie the island are much older, dating to Late Silurian and Early Devonian time, about 400 to 420 million years ago. Subsurface deposits of halite (rock salt) dissolved, allowing the collapse of overlying limestones; these once-broken but now solidified rocks comprise the Mackinac Breccia.
The melting glaciers formed the Great Lakes, and the receding lakewaters eroded the limestone bedrock, forming the island’s steep cliffs and rock formations. At least three previous lake levels are known, two of them higher than the present shore: Algonquin level lakeshores date to about 13,000 years ago, and the Nipissing level shorelines formed 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. During an intermediate period of low water between these two high-water stages, the Straits of Mackinac shrank to a narrow gorge which discharged its water into Lake Huron through Mackinac Falls, located just east of Mackinac Island.
As the Great Lakes assumed their present levels, Mackinac Island took on its current size. The steep cliffs were one of the primary reasons for the British army’s choice of the island for a fortification; their decision differed from that of the French army, which had built Fort Michilimackinac about 1715 near present-day Mackinaw City. The limestone formations are still part of the island’s appeal. However, tourists are attracted by the natural beauty rather than the strategic value. One of the most popular geologic formations is Arch Rock, a natural limestone arch, 146 feet (45 m) above the ground. Other popular geologic formations include Devil’s Kitchen, Skull Cave, and Sugar Loaf.
Nature
Mackinac Island contains a wide variety of terrain, including fields, marshes, bogs, coastline, boreal forest, and limestone formations. The environment is legally preserved on the island by the State Historic Park designation. About half of the shoreline and adjacent waters off Mackinac Island, including the harbor (Haldimand Bay) and the southern and western shore from Mission Point to Pointe aux Pins, is protected as part of the Straits of Mackinac Shipwreck Preserve, a state marine park.
As it is separated from the mainland by 3 miles (4.8 km) of water, few large mammals inhabit the island, except those that traverse the ice during the winter months. Coyotes have recently been reported. Rabbits, fox, raccoons, otters, mink, gray and red squirrels, and chipmunks are all common as is the occasional beaver and coyote. Bats are the most abundant migratory mammals as crossing the water is no obstacle for them. There are many limestone caves serving as homes for the bats and many insects on the island for the bat to prey on. The island is frequented by migratory birds on their trips between their summer and winter habitats. Eagles and hawks are abundant in April and May, while smaller birds such as Yellow Warblers, American Redstart, and Indigo Bunting are more common in early summer. Near the shoreline, gulls, herons, geese, and loons are common. Owls, including Snowy Owls and Great Grey Owls, come to the island from the Arctic to hunt in the warmer climate. Other birds, such as chickadees, cardinals, Blue Jays, and woodpeckers, live on the island year-round. Toads have also been found.
Mackinac Island contains over 600 species of vascular plants. Flowering plants and wildflowers are abundant, including Trillium, Lady Slippers, Forget-me-nots, Violets, Trout Lily, Spring Beauty, Hepatica, Buttercups, and Hawkweeds in the forests and Orchids, Fringed Gentian, Butter-and-Eggs, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit along the shoreline. The island’s forests are home to many varieties of trees, such as maple, birch, elm, cedar, pine, and spruce.
Historic Places:
All of Mackinac Island was listed as a National Historic Landmark in October 1960. In addition, because of the island’s long history and preservation efforts starting in the 1890s, eight separate locations on the island, and a ninth site on adjacent Round Island, are listed in the United States National Register of Historic Places.
* Fort Mackinac was built in 1780 and was closed as a fort in 1895 as it no longer had any strategic purpose. It has been restored to its late 19th century state through efforts beginning in the 1930s.
* The Matthew Geary House was built in 1846, was added to the register in 1971, and is now available for vacation rentals.
* The Grand Hotel is a Victorian-style structure that opened in 1887. It gained national prominence after the 1980 film Somewhere in Time was shot on location at the hotel.
* The Indian Dormitory was constructed under direction of US Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft after the signing of the 1836 Treaty of Washington, as a school and a place for Native Americans visiting the island to stay when receiving yearly allotments. The building was restored in 1966 and converted to a museum. It has not been open to the public since 2003. Extensive renovation is needed, but there are no plans to reopen it in the next few years.
* Mission Church was built in 1829 and is the oldest surviving church building in Michigan. Restoration efforts have returned the church to its 1830s appearance.[
* Mission House was built in 1825 as a boarding school for Native American children. It became a hotel in 1849 and a rooming house in 1939. It is restored and now houses State Park employees.
* The Round Island Lighthouse is located just south of the island on the small, uninhabited Round Island. The light was built in 1894 and automated in 1924. Extensive restoration efforts began in the 1970s and the exterior and structure have since been repaired.
* The Agency House of the American Fur Company was built in 1820 as the home for the company’s Mackinac Island agent, Robert Stuart. It is now open to the public as a fur trade museum.
* The Michigan Governor’s Summer Residence was built overlooking the harbor in 1902 and was purchased by the state for use as a governor’s residence in 1943.
* The entire island, Haldimand Bay, and a small shipwreck form a historic district.
* Post Cemetery, which is said to be one of only four locations in the United States where the U.S. flag is always flown at half-staff (the others are the Punchbowl in Honolulu, the Gettysburg National Cemetery, and Arlington National Cemetery).
* Wawashkamo Golf Club was laid out in 1898 as a Scottish links-type course and is now the oldest continuously played golf coure in Michigan.
Film/Television:
The majority of the film Somewhere in Time was filmed on Mackinac Island. Several landmarks are visible in the film, including the Grand Hotel and the lighthouse on nearby Round Island. The Mackinac Bridge is faintly visible in the background of one scene. The film’s director said he needed to “find a place that looked like it hadn’t changed in eighty years.”
Mackinac Island appeared on two episodes of Dirty Jobs, with host Mike Rowe as a Mackinac Bridge maintenance worker, and a horse manure and garbage removal/composting collector.