Stateside Michigan –
It’s been 150 years since Mackinac Island received national park status, becoming just the second national park in our country’s history.
Northern Michigan’s car-free, fudge-filled retreat is an iconic part of the Michigan lakeshore. And its human history reaches back many centuries. Stateside spoke with the chief curator at Mackinac State Historic Parks, Craig Wilson, about early life and conflict on Mackinac Island, the tourism boom, and the little-known history of Mackinac’s brief time as a national park.
Human history on Mackinac began with Anishinaabe people, who came to the island to fish, as well as for diplomatic and religious reasons.
The name Mackinac is a shortening of the word Michilimackinac, which likely comes from a French interpretation of a word in Anishinaabemowin that means “land of the great turtle.”
The British established the first permanent European settlement on Mackinac Island in 1779, as a result of the Revolutionary War. British authorities feared that their previous community, on the site of modern-day Mackinaw City, was too vulnerable.
“It’s right down on the water,” Wilson said. “It had a wooden wall around it, but not really great from a purely military perspective. So they made the decision to move over here to Mackinac Island. The island itself is its own defensive feature, being surrounded by water.”
But the new fort was not without its flaws.
“Fort Mackinac itself does look very formidable from the south side as you are approaching the harbor,” Wilson said. “But one of the major weaknesses, which was identified even at the time it was constructed, is that it’s not all the way at the top of the island. There is still high ground to the north.”
Although Fort Mackinac did not see battle during the Revolutionary War, the American garrison did get their first taste of conflict two decades later during the War of 1812.
The United States declared war on Great Britain in June of 1812. But, Wilson said, “Nobody bothered to tell the garrison here on Mackinac Island.”
The news of the war did reach the British garrison at Fort St. Joseph, across the border in colonial Canada.
“They realized whoever controlled Mackinac Island had their fingers on the pulse of the fur trade, as well as relationships and interactions with the Anishinaabek,” Wilson said.
The British garrison raised a militia of Canadian colonists and allied native tribes. They landed on the north side of the island and marched on Fort Mackinac overnight.
“And when the American garrison woke up on the morning of July 17 in 1812, they realized that the British had again about 600 soldiers looking down at them from the high ground with a gun pointed at them,” Wilson said. “They were totally indefensible. The British commander told them to surrender ‘or else.’ And that’s exactly what happened.”
Fort Mackinac and Mackinac Island were taken under British control until the end of the war.
Tourism began in earnest on Mackinac Island in the 1840s. The island continued gaining popularity as a vacation spot through the 1850s, and the first purpose-built hotels began rising from its shores. Then, after a brief pause during the Civil War, tourism on Mackinac exploded.
As the tourism industry brought more visitors and more development, it also spurred conversation about preserving the natural features that people were coming to see. Grand limestone structures like the Arch Rock and Sugarloaf, Wilson said, “are part of the reason that people have always wanted to be here again, going all the way back to those first Anishinaabe people gathering here on the island.”
The push to preserve Mackinac Island as a national park was led by Senator Thomas Ferry, who grew up on the island. After Yellowstone became the country’s first national park in 1872, Ferry determined that the best way to both protect Mackinac and increase its profile was to seek a national park designation.
But members of Congress were more swayed by arguments about limiting costs — since the area around the fort was already federally owned and maintained by the garrison, the national park designation would neither disrupt private land rights, nor require additional federal staff.
“The deciding factor,” Wilson said, “was that at least in theory, this national park would not cost anything.”
President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation creating the Mackinac Island National Park in 1875, and the commander of Fort Mackinac took on an additional role as park superintendent.
Mackinac’s time as a national park was short-lived. And once again, the decision was about money.
In the 1890s, the U.S. Army was looking for cost savings, and it began to consolidate its scattered defensive holdings into larger posts. In 1894 the decision was made to decommission Fort Mackinac. The soldiers who had been caring for the park were redeployed elsewhere.
To ensure that Mackinac remained protected, the War Department agreed to transfer the national park land (and the now-unoccupied fort) to the state of Michigan. In September 1895, the federal government handed off control of the land to the newly created Mackinac Island State Park Commission. Mackinac Island, the nation’s second-ever national park, became Michigan’s first-ever state park.
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