Lower Michigan is cradled by Lake Michigan on the west and Lake Huron to the east. Mackinac Island, at the very tip of Lower Michigan, overlooks the straits between the two lakes. The journey through northwest Michigan begins with a ferry ride to Mackinac Island before resuming our land journey south and west.
Because of the strategic location of the straits between the two Great Lakes humans have inhabited the area for thousands of years. The first European presence in the straits was a mission established on Mackinac Island in 1670. Mackinac Island sits astride the straits and all maritime traffic passes within its watchful view. The mission moved to the north shore at St. Ignace in 1671 and then moved south across the straits to the mainland side at Mackinaw City in 1708 where the French built Fort Michilimackinac. French ceded the territory to England in 1761 after the Seven Years War and during the American Revolution the British abandoned the fort and moved back to the island, a more defensible position, and built Fort Mackinac atop the limestone bluff. The Americans took control after the revolution of 1776 but the British temporarily took it back during the War of 1812. By December 1814 the war was over and the United States assumed permanent control of the fort. The political stability of the area soon gave rise to a bustling trade in fish, furs and lumber, and John Jacob Astor established the northern headquarters of the American Fur Company on the island in 1820. Millions of dollars of furs passed through Mackinac Island during the next decade. Fishing replaced furs as the primary industry as growing cities around the Great Lakes proved to be a ready market. The Civil War largely passed Mackinac Island by and the US Army decommissioned the fort in 1895 and transferred the island to the State of Michigan as a state park. A key decision was made in 1898 when island residents voted to permanently ban the “horseless carriage” from the island. This decision, still in place today, means that there are no automobiles on the island. All traffic is by foot or horse drawn carriage. The history lesson is over, let’s visit the island!
Mackinac Island
The only access to the island is by ferry, either from St. Ignace on the UP or Mackinaw City on the Down Below. The island is overrun during the summer and weekends by thousands of tourists and there are three separate ferry companies running boats every half hour to and from the island. I buy a ticket on the Shepler Ferry ($30 round trip). As I wait on the dock, the ferry returns from Mackinac Island in the distance.
By the 1880’s Mackinac Island was a premier summer vacation resort for the wealthy, many of whom built elaborate “cottages” along the bluffs. In 1887 the stunning Grand Hotel opened and quickly became an island of gentility for the wealthy in the middle of stunning scenery (a role which it proudly, if somewhat pretentiously, continues to fulfill today.) The ferry ride takes about 20 minutes and as we approach the turn into the harbor some of the mansions and the Grand Hotel come into view.
The ferry turns the corner around the jetty that protects the harbor and approaches the dock. Fort Mackinac rises on the top of the bluff on the right.
To my left I can see the Mackinac Bridge rising in the distance.
The village drapes in a gentle curve around the bay. The first street, Main Street, is lined for blocks with expensive shops (seems like about every third one being a “fudge store”), restaurants and galleries. This is not a destination for the budget-concious!
Everywhere is evidence of the three means of available transportation: foot, bicycle, and carriage.
A block behind Main Street at the foot of the bluff is Market Street, site of a number of buildings from the early fur trading days.
The Biddle House is the oldest house on the island with sections dating from 1780.
The Machilimackinac County Courthouse dates from 1839.
At the eastern end of Market Street on the corner of Market and the fort road is the 1820’s American Fur Company Store and around the corner is the 1873 Trinity Church.
Standing on the corner I look up at my next destination, Fort Mackinac.
Fort Mackinac
The fort was built in 1779 on the crest of a limestone bluff which rises above the harbor. The walls are three feet thick with a wooden palisade on top. The entrance is up a ramp which rises to the right in the photo above. Once in the fort I climb the front wall and am rewarded with a stunning view of the town and shipping channel (between the two lighthouses) below. It’s a rare sunny day, most of this trip has been in less than ideal weather…
Turning to my right I can see along the front wall.
The fort is roughly triangular in shape with tall blockhouses at each point. To my right are the Commissary (1878), Headquarters (1860), Storehouse (1860) and Bathhouse (1885).
A large building across the parade ground is the Soldiers Barracks (1859).
I climb up to the far point and down the northern side are the Schoolhouse (1879), North Blockhouse (1798) and the Officers’ Quarters (1835).
Both officers’ children and enlisted men were required to attend school in the late 1800’s.
The North Blockhouse looms above the walkway.
The Officers’ Quarters is actually a duplex designed to house a family on each side.
From the front porch of the Officers’ Quarters the view is down across the parade ground to the front of the fort.
To the right is the South Blockhouse and the town below.
A bonus is that one of the giant freighters that ply the Great Lakes is traversing the Straits of Mackinac right in front of me!
I head back down the hill to Main Street and turn left for a brief stroll (the commercial area is to my right). Here I find the oldest hotel on the island, the Island House, originally built in 1852, expanded in 1885 and 1912, and still an operating hotel.
Also along the street are mansions of the wealthy, many now operating as bed and breakfast inns.
I turn around and head back through the commercial area along Main Street and turn up Cadotte Avenue towards the Grand Hotel. On my left is the 1819 William Backhouse Astor house, built a number of blocks south of the Astor commercial buildings on Market Street.
Lavishly landscaped grounds herald the approach to the crowning glory of the island, the world-renowned Grand Hotel. The hotel proudly protects its reputation as a grand destination for the well-bred, keeps out the lower classes by charging and admission fee to simply walk on the front porch, and requires suit coat and tie for gentlemen, semi-formal dress for the ladies in the evening. Clearly I pass by the opportunity for a more in-depth visit…
Returning to the ferry dock in the center of town I am reminded of the ban on automobiles. Everything transported on the island is by horse-drawn carriage or cart, including all supplies for the hotels. I pass several deliveries on their way up to the hotel and, yes, see several of the staff necessary to keep the streets suitable for walking. There is a slight drawback to horses everywhere…
While that certainly isn’t the odor of car exhaust in the air, the earthy scent of manure wafts its way through this rather chic little village…
It was a great visit, the weather cooperated (for once), it was a sound decision to beat the crowds by going in the middle of the week, and the mix of sights was fascinating. The ferry again heads back to the mainland docks while in the distance another freighter passes under the Mackinac Bridge.
Once across the bridge our path strikes out west towards Lake Michigan’s Little Traverse and Grand Traverse Bay. The highway threads through dense forest before eventually briefly touching on the bay shore.
From Petoskey to Traverse City we cross the heart of northwest Michigan tourist country. For 150 years people have flocked to the bays and inlets for relief from the summer heat farther south. Numerous Victorian cottages dot the forests, most lovingly restored by current owners. The extent of the tourist intrusion is an issue for locals, while I briefly stopped in Charlevoix I overhead a heated discussion about the cost of living and housing for locals. Only 40% of the housing in Charlevoix is actually occupied by year round residents. An example of the tourist housing are the “Mushroom Houses”. Originally built in the 1950’s by architect Earl Young, the mushroom houses are so labeled because they were designed to blend organically into their surroundings.
The mushroom houses perch along Park Street and have peeks of the bay through the forest on the north side of the street.
I swing around the major city of northwestern Michigan, Traverse City, a booming area of around 150,000 people in the hills surround the southern tip of Grand Traverse Bay. It’s a beautiful area, center of the Michigan cherry growing industry, and on the weekend I passed through was crammed with visitors. Undoubtedly it would have been nice to explore during quieter times but in search of calmer territories I pass around the metropolitan area and head northwest to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore.
Glen Haven
As ship traffic increased in Lake Michigan in the mid-1800’s ships would need to periodically put in to shore to replenish their fuel supplies with timber harvested from the great forests bordering the lake. Glen Haven was founded across from North and South Manitou Islands. About two-thirds of the way up the eastern side of Lake Michigan from Chicago a deep natural channel between two islands (North and South Manitou) and the mainland allowed ships relatively safe passage through the hazards of Lake Michigan. In 1857 a saw mill and inn were established on Sleeping Bear Bay just north of a line of sand dunes and served the passing ship traffic as a fuel stop. David Henry Day first came to the Sleeping Bear Bay area in 1881 as an agent of the Northern Transportation and ten years later he bought the company and 5,000 acres of timberland along the bay. Here Day created his own little “kingdom”, planning, financing and constructing the small cluster of buildings huddled along the bay which became known as Glen Haven. Day and later generations of his family guided the little town through a succession of economic periods, first as a lumber and fuel port for the steamships, later as owner of a fruit cannery and finally as a steward of the area for tourists visiting the sand dunes. As the dominant businessman of the area, Day was one of the first people to plant fruit trees in the area. He also donated land to the state of Michigan to create its first state park and campground just east of the Glen Haven. Descendants of Day occupied some of the houses in Glen Haven until as late as 1992, today the town survives as a museum for tourists under the stewardship of the National Park Service as part of the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. Glen Haven is somewhat protected from storms sweeping in off Lake Michigan to the west by a line of sand dunes that have shifted over time.
Standing on the lakeshore by the cannery and looking south one sees present day Glen Haven. The general store and homes are on the left, the historic Sleeping Bear Inn is on the right.
Standing in the same spot but turning around and looking north one sees the only evidence of the large dock that once stretched out into the bay, the remains of two pilings reaching out of the lake.
To my right is the old 1920’s cannery building, which housed equipment that processed local fruits until the late 1940’s when it was converted to a garage and repair shop for the Sleeping Bear Dunesmobiles, vehicles which transported tourists up and down the local sand dunes.
Today it is a small museum preserving examples of the boats which used to ply these waters.
Taking the short walk up Main Street from the cannery the 1857 Sleeping Bear Inn (currently undergoing renovation) is perched to the west. The inn served visitors until it closed in 1972.
Kitty-corner across the street is the general store. The store was the social center of Gen Haven, selling a little bit of everything. Behind the store was an icehouse, granary, butcher house and a croquet lawn. The icehouse stored 5,000 blocks of ice cut from frozen lakes in the winter and stored in sawdust to last through the hot summers. Day’s family lived in the apartment above.
In 1890 Day built a house next door but his wife refused to move in, wanting to stay in her familiar quarters above the store. Day employees and other family members lived in the house until 1992, the National Park Service now uses it to house seasonal employees.
Just south of the house was the blacksmith’s shop, an essential service that Day provided to local farmers and ships that stopped by needing repairs.
West of the cannery along the bay is Sleeping Bear Coast Guard Station. Over the years fog, storms and shoals caused more than 80 wrecks in the Manitou Passage off Glen Haven.
Glen Haven Coast Guard Station
The first lifesaving station in the area was created in 1854 on North Manitou Island across the bay from Glen Haven. Eventually one was also constructed on neighboring South Manitou Island, and as early as 1877 a federal report recommended that a station be built at Sleeping Bear Point on the mainland. Day lobbied the federal government for help and eventually in 1930 persuaded it to build a station on Sleeping Bear Point for what was then called the US Life Saving Service. A year later shifting sand dunes forced the relocation of the station closer to Glen Haven. The original buildings were raised on log rollers and pulled by horses to the current location. In 1915 the US Life Saving Service was merged with US Revenue Cutter Service to form the US Coast Guard. Approaching the station from the rear the two main buildings from 1902 are the small boat house on the right (roof with cupola behind the red garage) and the main two-story Coast Guard station on the left.
There were two primary means of assistance, the first for a ship which had run aground close to the shore and the second for ships farther out. Once the alarm was raised, the coast guard crew would pull the beach cart to the closest point to the ship. The beach cart (blue in the picture below) held all of the equipment needed to rescue people from a ship which was within about 400 yards of the shore.
The cart contained a small cannon and a rope stored in a “faking” box. (The word “faking” is a nautical term of Scandinavian origin that means to coil a rope.) The box contained a flat board surrounded by spindles.
A rope was meticulously woven around the spindles in such a way that when uncoiled it would easily and quickly flow out in a straight line.
The way the process worked is that the free end of the rope would be attached to a cannon ball. The cannon ball would then be loaded into the small cannon which in turn would then be shot at the grounded ship. This provided a secure connection for the ship passengers to hang on to as they then swam to shore. The second means of support for a foundering ship that was farther out from shore than the rope could reach was a boat rescue. The boat was kept in the beach house on a trailer which in an emergency was able to be quickly rolled down to the water on a track.
A picture from the 1930’s shows the use of the cannon during a training demonstration.
A short distance to the west is the original coast guard station where the crew lived. The building was constructed from a template used at several other sites around the Great Lakes.
A central hallway and narrow set of stairs separates the building. On the right was the station “keeper” quarters, commander of the station and the only person who was allowed to have his family live with him. The left side was devoted to the seven member crew. Today the first floor houses a series of displays historical artifacts of the Sleeping Bear station. The keeper’s side consisted of two large rooms, the back room was the kitchen area as evidenced by the sink along the back wall and the storage cabinet along the wall.
The three other rooms on the first floor contain similar displays.
Up the narrow, steep stairs were the sleeping quarters, crew on the left, keeper’s family on the right.
The seven member crew all slept in the same room with each having an individual numbered closet under the eaves to store their belongings. The furnishings of the sleeping room are original from around 1910.
I love stumbling across this interesting bits of Americana off the beaten path! As I leave the station down the front steps the view sweeps out across Sleeping Bear Bay.
Leaving Glen Haven my path follows south along Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. The prevailing western winds across Lake Michigan pile up sand along the eastern shore and here sand dunes shift and grow. The novelty draws tourists and the highway skirts an area where the dunes approach the pavement. Here a poplar stop allows tourists to climb the dunes.
South of that point is dense forest and as I turn off the highway towards the dunes at first I am in a tunnel of green.
Emerging into the sunlight a viewpoint opens up expansive views of Sleeping Bear Bay.
To the west are grass covered dunes and Lake Michigan, to the east are inland lakes.
Continuing to head south along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan for the most part the highway runs inland, rarely offering a glimpse of the lake. A storm is brewing on the horizon, a brief opening at a pull out high above Lake Michigan has a shimmering lake under a sullen sky.
The good weather is gone, showers and wind are now all around I approach the town of Ludington, an old timber port on Lake Michigan.
Ludington
The modern history of the Great Lakes begins with the travels of Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary who explored the area around Lake Michigan and the upper Mississippi river valley in the 1670’s. He died in 1675 near the bay where a river entered Lake Michigan, now near the current town of Ludington. The first European settlement in the area didn’t occur until nearly 170 years later when Burr Caswell established a farm on the narrow spit of land between Pere Marquette Lake and Lake Michigan. The area boomed in the late 1880’s as a timber producing center and Ludington became a major port on Lake Michigan. The stop also became a primary ferry port, home to ferries that crisscrossed Lake Michigan between Wisconsin and Michigan. Today the lonely remnant of that ferry trade is the SS Badger, which still ferries automobiles across the lake to Wisconsin. The decline of the timber industry took its’ toll on Ludington, today around 8,000 people call the area home along with a number of major manufacturers. James Street leads from the harbor up to US 10 where the road turns east to cross Michigan.
The entrance to the harbor where the Pere Marquette River enters Lake Michigan is guarded by a lonely lighthouse.
Down in the port sits a reminder of a bygone area, the SS Spartan. Once a proud ferry crossing Lake Michigan to Wisconsin a decline in traffic lead to it being sidelined in 1979. She now slumbers in rust draped serenity in Ludington harbor.
As US 10 heads east out of the small central core the 1893 Mason County Courthouse dominates the skyline.
Just beyond the courthouse the wealthy merchants of the turn of the 20th century built their palaces.
South of Ludington the Historic White Pine Village celebrates the history of the area. Historic buildings from around Mason County have been transported and preserved here on the original Caswell farm. As I enter the complex (from the gift shop, of course!) the village opens up before me.
It’s an eclectic collection of buildings honoring the history of the area. During the boom years of the late 1800’s the numerous lakes in the area began to host resorts for visitors from the busy industrial cities of the Rust Belt. Typical of the cabins is this one, built on the shores of Hamlin Lake as a rustic retreat for those weary of city life.
Next is the 1890 Marchido school house.
Further up the path on the right is the centerpiece of the village, the original two story 1849 Burr Caswell house. This is the only building in the village that is in its’ original site.
In 1850 the area became Mason County and Caswell allowed the first floor of his house to become the county courthouse while he and his family lived on the second floor. The main room on the first floor served as the courtroom.
In the back corner of the first floor the original cellar served as the first jail in Mason County.
The 1870 general store is full of original items.
Down on the flats the bright yellow late 1800’s Burn’s farm house stands as a testimony to the life of a wealthy farmer of the period.
The ground floor had a large parlor and dining room on one side with two bedrooms, a small sewing room, and a kitchen along the left.
There were two additional bedrooms and a play area on the second floor. Out back on the porch is a washing machine and ice box.
Behind the house are the barn and machine sheds.
Beyond the farm house complex is a cluster of buildings containing the post office, hardware store and doctor’s office, all furnished with turn of the 20th century items.
Doctor’s Office
In the doctor’s office a poster on the wall displays the cost of service in the 1920’s while below on a table is an egg crate. Individuals who could not afford to pay often traded items for service. Eggs must have been a common commodity and the doctor’s office was prepared!
Remembering that the village is built on the original Caswell farm sitting between Pere Marquette Lake and Lake Michigan, when I leave the village I head up the peninsula until near the end a small park allows views of Lake Michigan north and south.
Turning around and looking east the view through the trees is across Pere Marquette Lake to Ludington.
Another interesting stop along the way. I am now going to turn east and cross Michigan to the eastern side.
Next Up: Wilkommen!
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