5 Ways That Mackinac Island Reminds Me of Home

Once a year we ride a ferry on Lake Huron for our day trip to Mackinac Island, Michigan. People come here to see: The Grand Hotel. Tourists everywhere on bicycles. Tourists everywhere in horse-drawn carriages. Horse-drawn wagons carrying the luggage of hotel guests. Horses everywhere. No automobiles. (Except emergency vehicles.) Victorian summer “cottages” larger than my house. Highly-publicized fudge shops. The Round Island Lighthouse at its harbor. Views of the Mackinac Bridge.

If you have ever seen the movie “Somewhere in Time” with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, then you have seen Mackinac Island.

I hear stories about the island that aren’t on any tours. In the 1970’s, Jonathan’s parents spent three years in St. Ignace, MI. They lived right across the street from a dock for a ferry to the island. My mother-in-law substitute taught at the island’s public school. (Yes, some families live on the island year-round.) My father-in-law worked at St. Ignace’s radio station and got involved in a campaign to save Round Island Lighthouse.

We spend about one day a year on Mackinac Island because an overnight trip to the island isn’t in our budget. Still, the following things on this island remind me of the three communities that I consider home in Pennsylvania:

1.) The Victorian “Cottages.” They cover a good portion of the developed land of this island. These summer homes are all larger than my own house, but they inspire me since they are from the same time period as my own house and neighborhood.

2.) The Island’s Preservation Efforts. (Closely related to item 1.) In the 1970’s, certain folks with local power wanted to tear down the Round Island Lighthouse since it was no longer used as a working lighthouse. A grass-roots campaign saved it. This lighthouse is one of the most prominent landmarks for Mackinac Island tourists and it is featured in a scene of “Somewhere in Time.”

In my community, we constantly come across people who want to tear down the buildings here that have a history, the very buildings that could define our community’s future.

3.)  The Resourceful and Self-Sustaining Residents. They remind me of the people that I know in central and western Pennsylvania. Once the lake starts to freeze, the ferry boats to Mackinac Island shut down. Later, after the Coast Guard measures the ice and finds it sufficient, the residents can travel across the lake to the mainland by snowmobile. Once the ice starts to thaw, snowmobiles are no longer an option and residents wait for the ferry boats to run again.

The towns that I call home in Pennsylvania don’t see nearly the amount of lake effect weather that Northern Michigan does. (Lake Erie does impact us, but I know that this doesn’t really count.) However, I grew in the Appalachian Mountains near Pennsylvania’s highest point, so I have some empathy for the isolation of winter.

4.) The Volunteer Fire Department. Now, the island and the nearby communities on the mainland all have volunteer fire departments. (Fire trucks are permitted to drive on the island. At least they don’t use horse-drawn fire trucks!) Last spring we read about a structure fire in the island’s downtown business district. Ordinarily the mutual aid firefighters respond by boat. However, this time the firefighters from St. Ignace arrived by helicopter because the lake still had ice.

Volunteer fire departments are important to the culture of all of the places that I call home in Pennsylvania. I spent the first years of my life in a very small town in central Pennsylvania (near Harrisburg) that had only one real road. The town’s one grocery store sat directly across this road from the fire station. The fire chief owned the grocery store. I used to watch him run out from behind the deli counter whenever the whistle blew at the fire station. We later moved to another small town where the long-time fire department president also taught at my school. I even attended a college (St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA) with its own volunteer fire department. Some of my classmates staffed the department.

5.) Buildings that were Picked Up and Moved by Horse to a Completely Different Place. We have at least one house in Parnassus that was moved from one lot to a different lot using this method in the 1800’s.

I have posted above a photo of the current Ste. Anne Church on Mackinac Island. This is one of my favorite buildings on the island. French Catholics built the original Ste. Anne Church on the mainland in the 1700’s. However, the British later ordered the entire French community in this area to relocate to the island. In 1780, in the middle of winter, the original Ste. Anne Church was dismantled and moved across a frozen Lake Huron to the island.

These are five reasons why I feel at home on Mackinac Island.