Mackinac Island, Michigan

We are heading to Mackinac Island - a place where there are no cars, only horse drawn carriages. I'm looking forward to the slower pace...and the fudge! Here's some info about Mackinaw that I pulled off the tourism website:

According to Anishinaabe-Ojibwe tradition, Mackinac Island is a sacred place populated by the first people and was home to the Great Spirit Gitchie Manitou. Mackinac Island, by virtue of its location in the center of the Great Lakes waterway, became a tribal gathering place where offerings were made to Gitchie Manitou and where tribes buried their chiefs to honor the Great Spirit. Native Americans traveling the Straits region likened the shape of the island to that of a turtle’s back and named it Michilimackinac, Land of the Great Turtle.

Celebrations to honor the Great Spirit took place on Mackinac Island each spring along with rest and relaxation on after the long northern winter. Hunters and accomplished anglers would meet, trade and rejoin their families while elders would discuss tribal affairs. Once the Europeans came, these early visitors believed Gitchie Manitou fled the Island to dwell in the Northern Lights.

Mackinac’s location and rich fish population also drew French traders and Jesuit missionaries. In the 1670s, the first Europeans visited Mackinac. Father Claude Dablon wished to establish a mission on Mackinac Island and encouraged Father Jacques Marquette to move his congregation to the island. Eager to escape the dangers from the Huron and Sioux conflict, Father Marquette agreed and moved his displaced band of Huron followers to the island in 1671.

blah, blah, blah...

In the 1880s and 1890s Mackinac changed greatly. Business investment by large railroad companies and personal wealth led to the construction of opulent Victorian summer homes. Three transportation companies joined forces with hotelier John Oliver Plank and with Charles Caskey, a local cottage builder with an amazing reputation for quick construction, and built the Grand Hotel in less than four months. Meat packers, lumbermen, and railroad barons constructed elegant “cottages” on Mackinac’s West Bluff, East Bluff, and Annex areas.

The traveling public also enjoyed Mackinac’s great offerings. Local carriage drivers were hired to take visitors on sightseeing excursions, entertaining them with stories about Indian legends and local history. By 1880, twelve carriage licenses were issued, and by 1896, a representative of the local carriage drivers, Thomas Chambers, petitioned the Village of Mackinac Island to ban the “horseless carriages” or automobiles because they startled the horses.

Growing concerns for public health and safety in the 1920s led to regulatory systems which remain in effect today to restrict motor vehicles, excluding emergency vehicles in both the State Park and the City of Mackinac Island. The local carriage drivers formed the Carriagemen’s Association in the mid-1920s and by 1947 formed today’s Mackinac Island Carriage Tours.