How America’s Forgotten Second National Park Lost Its Federal Status—and Gained a New Lease on Life as a State Park

Much of Mackinac Island was designated as a national park in 1875, but it proved to be too expensive for the government to maintain, so it was transferred to the State of Michigan in 1895

Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent

June 9, 2025

Visitors pose atop Arch Rock, a geological formation on Mackinac Island. Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

It’s a mild Friday afternoon on Mackinac Island, a small, tree-covered landmass in Lake Huron, between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. As a horse-drawn carriage clip-clops by, a family spreads a picnic blanket at Marquette Park, the lush lawn at the foot of Fort Mackinac. The historic military outpost is home to the oldest surviving building in all of Michigan, the Officers’ Stone Quarters, which was erected in 1780 to house high-ranking British military leaders during the American Revolution.

It’s still standing because, a century and a half ago, the United States’ leaders decided to set aside much of Mackinac Island for the “benefit and enjoyment of the people.” In 1875, three years after designating Yellowstone as the world’s first national park, President Ulysses S. Grant established the second: Mackinac National Park.

The island’s stint as home to a national park was brief—just 20 years in the late 19th century—and has largely been forgotten. Today, Mackinac is best known for its abundant fudge shops and car-free streets. Around 84 percent of the island is protected as a state park. But the effects of its often-overlooked national park period are still evident, as vacationers continue to marvel at geologic wonders like Arch Rock and Sugar Loaf, explore sites from the War of 1812, and wander through buildings that are nearly as old as America itself. “It was declared a national park due to its natural beauty, but also because of the historic curiosities and its rich history,” says Steve Brisson, director of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission, the state agency that manages the park.

Horse-drawn carriage on Mackinac Island — Mackinac Island has been car-free since 1898. Courtesy of the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau

This summer, Mackinac Island is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its national park designation with events and activities that aim to spotlight this mostly unknown chapter in its long history. The festivities include daily informational programs, guided walks and bike tours, and an 1880s-themed Fourth of July bash. A new documentary, A Pride of Purpose: The Story of Mackinac National Park, will also debut this summer, and the Richard & Jane Manoogian Mackinac Art Museum is hosting a juried art exhibition called “Iconic Mackinac.”

Here’s a look back at Mackinac Island’s history—and how its two-decade stretch as the site of a national park helped shape this iconic Midwest destination today.

Mackinac’s earliest inhabitants

Long before the arrival of the first Europeans, the Indigenous Anishinaabe people lived throughout the Great Lakes region, including on Mackinac Island. The area’s earliest inhabitants were members of the Odawa, Ojibwe and Potawatomi tribes, which together formed the “Council of Three Fires.”

The Anishinaabe thought the island’s limestone bluffs and dense forests looked like a green shell protruding from the water, so they dubbed it “Michilimackinac,” or “great turtle.” The landmass is central to the Anishinaabe creation story, which tells how the world was formed on the back of a turtle. Michilimackinac was and always will be a sacred place for the Anishinaabe. For generations, it was also a seasonal hunting and fishing ground, with “whitefish the size of a man’s leg,” says Eric Hemenway, director of repatriation, archives and records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

An aerial view of Mackinac Island Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

Some tribes also used the island to regulate trade, since its central location in the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan gave them a strategic advantage. “My tribe, the Odawa, recognized this very early on,” says Hemenway. “Anybody that came through had to deal with us and had to pay … kind of like a tax. ‘You want to do business in our backyard, what do you got?’ There’s going to be some type of fee or gift-giving out of respect.”

Unlike many other tribes, which were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and relocated to reservations, the Anishinaabe never left the Great Lakes, and many tribal members still live in the region today. In 2020, roughly 13 percent of Mackinac Island’s year-round residents—76 out of 583—identified as Native American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “We’ve been here for thousands of years, and we’re still here,” says Hemenway. “We’re partners, we’re neighbors, but at the same time, we’re distinct sovereigns within this space we call America. And this is still a Native place.”

French, British and American influence

Like the Anishinaabe, early European settlers—and, later, Americans—recognized the importance of Mackinac Island’s location for regulating travel and trade. French explorers were the first to arrive, starting in the early 1600s. When they reached the upper Great Lakes, they found forests brimming with minks, ermines, foxes, martens, otters and beavers—perfect for meeting the demand for fur back home. Soon, the booming fur trade was the main economy of New France, with Mackinac Island serving as a summer rendezvous point for explorers and traders; Jesuit missionaries also briefly established a French mission on the island.

Visitors stand next to cannons at Fort Mackinac. Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

Around 1715, the French built Fort Michilimackinac, a fortified trading post, on the southern mainland in what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan. (Confusingly for first-time visitors, both Mackinaw and Mackinac are pronounced the same way: “MACK-in-awe.” The former spelling is based on English phonetics, while the latter is based on French pronunciation.) However, New France collapsed after the French and Indian War, and the fort fell into British hands in 1761. But the British soon found themselves embroiled in yet another conflict: the American Revolution. Worried about Michilimackinac’s vulnerability to attacks by American rebels, the British relocated the fort to the high bluffs of Mackinac Island in 1780 and shortened its name.

The Americans emerged victorious in 1783, but Mackinac Island only became part of the U.S. in 1796, after the signing of Jay’s Treaty. During the War of 1812, the British successfully recaptured Fort Mackinac and held onto it until the end of the conflict, when it passed back to the Americans.

Tourism comes to Mackinac Island

The upper Great Lakes fur trade continued after the War of 1812—this time, with John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company leading the industry. However, by the 1830s, the fur trade had started to wane, and a lucrative new industry had begun to emerge: tourism. Mackinac Island was located along a major shipping route through the Great Lakes, and steamships traveling between Detroit and Chicago often stopped there to refuel. Some of those ships had travel writers on board, says Brisson, and they began sharing their experiences on Mackinac Island with the masses.

A horse-drawn carriage on Mackinac Island in 1887 Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

As far as Brisson knows, there was no concerted effort to bring tourism to the island. But, he adds, Mackinac happened to have everything wealthy Victorians were looking for in a summer vacation destination: clean air, cool breezes, romantic paths through the woods, bluffs overlooking glistening waters. “After the Civil War, tourism really takes off,” says Brisson. “Mackinac comes into its own as a major summer resort of the Upper Midwest. It’s on the map as a place of wonderful natural beauty and historic charm.”

As tourists started pouring in, however, some onlookers began to worry about overdevelopment. One of those concerned individuals was Michigan Senator Thomas W. Ferry, who’d been born on the island in 1827. After Yellowstone was established as the first national park in 1872, Ferry began to push for Mackinac Island to become the second. He proposed turning roughly half of the island—land the federal government already owned because of Fort Mackinac—into a national park. “He feared that all this land on Mackinac Island is going to fall into private hands, it’s going to be locked up and not available to the public, and everything charming and beautiful about Mackinac is going to disappear,” says Brisson.

Ferry faced some opposition to his proposal. Texas Senator Morgan C. Hamilton disagreed with the entire premise of national parks, wondering why the government would set aside land for conservation and recreation while at the same time encouraging Americans to occupy the nation’s vast Western territory, according to Keith R. Widder’s book Mackinac National Park, 1875-1895. He didn’t want to see any federal funds used for national parks, either. That was an easy critique for Ferry to address: The federal government would not need to buy any additional land, and the U.S. Army troops stationed at Fort Mackinac could manage the new national park. President Grant signed the bill into law on March 3, 1875, officially establishing America’s second national park.

Michigan Senator Thomas W. Ferry Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

A postcard of Sugar Loaf Rock on Mackinac Island Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Navigating the new world of national parks

The National Park Service did not yet exist—and would not be established until 1916. Instead, the War Department was assigned to care for the new Mackinac National Park, with the commanding officer at Fort Mackinac, Major Alfred L. Hough, designated as the park’s first superintendent.

The fort’s leaders were “kind of left scratching their heads, especially the commandant, because this [was] not in his wheelhouse,” says Brisson. “They didn’t know what they were going to do. They were just kind of feeling their way forward. There was no model to follow. But they took their job seriously. They were told to preserve this park for the people. And that really drove them from the beginning.”

Hough worked with leaders from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to draft a set of rules and regulations for the new park. These included things like a ban on the “sale of wines and malt or spirituous liquors” inside the park, as well as a prohibition on “racing or riding and driving at great speed.” Parkgoers could not commit obscene or indecent acts, nor could they turn out their livestock to graze, with a few exceptions. Perhaps most importantly, the rules stipulated that visitors could not damage the “trees, shrubs, turf, natural curiosities, or any of the buildings, fences, bridges or other structures within the park.”

Women bicycling on Mackinac Island Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

Enforcing the rules, however, proved challenging. Tourists stripped the bark off birch trees, broke off pieces of Arch Rock and Sugar Loaf to take home as souvenirs, chopped down trees, and let their cattle run wild. “These animals were a true menace,” writes Widder in Mackinac National Park. “They trampled vegetation and blocked roadways. Furthermore, their droppings attracted flies and generated noxious odors, which fouled the otherwise refreshing Mackinac air. Yet the park superintendent … could never control these beasts.”

Also complicating matters was the question of jurisdiction. Since civilians were the ones violating the park’s rules, what power did the Army have over them? “They would simply have to note that these are the rules of the park, if they found a violator, then contact the civilian authorities and hope that the county sheriff would enforce the rules,” says Brisson. “Legally, they didn’t have the authority to do anything against a civilian. They could only punish military personnel.”

Over the years, the park’s superintendents were also hamstrung by a lack of money. When Congress created Mackinac National Park, it did not allocate any funding for maintenance. And though the War Department sent a second company of soldiers to Fort Mackinac in 1876, it refused to authorize “extra duty” assignments for them to work in the park, which would have meant paying them an additional 20 cents per day, per Widder’s book. They could only work in the park over the course of their normal duties, which were already mostly filled with military training exercises and other related activities. As a result, Hough and other park superintendents were constantly frustrated by their inability to protect the park’s features from vandals and thieves. “The commandant couldn’t really utilize the full labor force,” says Brisson.

Houses on Mackinac Island — Mackinac Island boasts charming cottages and historical hotels. Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

To help fund the park, Congress did authorize the sale of government land on neighboring Bois Blanc Island. In 1887, the Interior Department sold 500 acres for roughly $2,000 (nearly $70,000 today), which then-superintendent Captain Greenleaf A. Goodale used to build a nearly two-mile stretch of road that had been started by his predecessor, Captain Leslie Smith. The route, which Goodale named Leslie Avenue in Smith’s honor, quickly became “the most attractive and popular drive on the island,” he wrote in his 1889 annual report.

Congress also allowed the superintendent to lease parcels of land on Mackinac Island for the construction of summer cottages. The lessees were wealthy individuals from places like Detroit and Chicago who wanted to build homes on the 300-foot bluffs overlooking the water and were willing to pay $15 to $25 per year in rental fees for the privilege. With this modest cash flow, the park’s superintendents built and improved roads and trails, constructed a 20-foot observation tower, added handrails and stairways to popular walking paths, and made other improvements.

Visiting Mackinac National Park

As Fort Mackinac’s leaders did their best to maintain the national park, tourists continued to visit in droves. Many arrived aboard elegant steamships, but the number of guests increased once regional railroads built tracks north to Mackinaw City in the early 1880s. Ferries met the trains to whisk vacationers across the water to the island. Travelers came from all over the eastern U.S., with historic hotel registers showing they hailed from places like Cincinnati, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Buffalo, per Widder’s book.

View of Mackinac Harbor in the early 1900s Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

Tourists in fancy dress on Mackinac Island — Wealthy tourists flocked to Mackinac Island in the late 19th century. Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

Once they arrived, visitors had their choice of several hotels and boarding houses. The most luxurious was the Grand Hotel, which debuted in 1887 and remains open to this day. The majestic hotel was built in just 93 days on a bluff overlooking the Straits of Mackinac, with an elongated front porch—still the longest in the world, according to the hotel—for soaking up the views and basking in the cool breezes. Most guests stayed at the hotel for the entire summer season, enjoying amenities like fine dining, gala balls, concerts, golf and tennis.

The Grand Hotel catered to the upper crust of American society—mainly, the descendants of successful 19th-century industrialists who were eager to flaunt their generational wealth. “We weren’t built for the robber barons. We were built for their children,” says Bob Tagatz, the hotel’s resident historian. “These were very wealthy people who liked very fancy things. They were the leisure class, and they wanted out of the hot, dirty, filthy, stifling, industrial cities.”

Regardless of where they stayed, visitors could also fill their time by taking carriage rides and scenic cruises around the island. They rode bikes, took long walks, played baseball, and participated in sailing and rowing lessons. Visitors also had ample opportunities to shop, with merchants selling everything from tobacco and candy to jewelry and guidebooks. But, every year, as summer began to fade into fall, travelers packed up and went back home to their daily lives.

An aerial view of the Grand Hotel today Courtesy of the Grand Hotel

From national park to state park

In 1894, the War Department determined it could no longer afford to staff Fort Mackinac, which it estimated cost between $40,000 and $50,000 a year to maintain and provided no practical military service, according to Widder’s book. This decision left the future of Mackinac National Park in peril. “On October 9, 1894, soldiers from Fort Mackinac marched down to waiting boats, leaving only Lieutenant Woodbridge Geary and a squad of 11 men to guard the fort and park,” writes David A. Armour in Preservation at Mackinac: A History of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1895-2020. “Without the troops,” Armour adds, “who would care for the national park?”

Then-Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont wanted to sell the government’s land on Mackinac. But islanders and cottage owners opposed that idea and immediately sprang into action, appealing to anyone and everyone who would listen—including James McMillan, a successful businessman and U.S. senator from Michigan. McMillan visited the War Department and discussed transferring the national park to the State of Michigan, for the creation of a state park. The War Department was amenable, so McMillan set the plan in motion, garnering support from his fellow federal lawmakers, as well as state legislators back home. In March 1895, Congress passed a bill that officially handed off the national park to Michigan—with one stipulation: If the state ever stopped using the land as a park, it would transfer back to the federal government.

Michigan leaders created a commission to oversee the new Mackinac Island State Park, which was the first state park in Michigan and one of the first in the nation, says Brisson. The commission’s first president was, fittingly, Ferry, the now-retired senator who had advocated for the national park designation two decades earlier. Ferry attended two meetings before his death in 1896, per Armour’s book. The commission picked up where the Army had left off, working toward the same goal of preserving and protecting the park for the people’s enjoyment. In the early 20th century, that included buying up private land to increase the size of the state park.

Mackinac Island’s national park legacy and enduring appeal

Modern travelers continue to visit Mackinac Island for many of the same reasons they did more than a century ago: fresh air, lake views, outdoor recreation and relaxation. Though Mackinac Island was only a national park for a short while, traces of that time are everywhere, from the many roads and trails constructed by Army soldiers to Fort Mackinac itself, which is now nearly 250 years old.

Perhaps just as important is what’s absent from the island because of its former national park status. “I’m convinced there would have been condos everywhere,” says Brisson. “It would have been just covered in development, and, heaven knows, there would have been a water slide going through Arch Rock. There are plenty of places [around the world] that didn’t get preserved and became overdeveloped, and the thing that brought everybody there originally is now lost. … It’s because of the national park that didn’t happen here. It’s the only reason that didn’t happen here.”

People relaxing in the yard of the Mission House on Mackinac Island Courtesy of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission

Mackinac Island banned vehicles in 1898, and the state park followed suit in 1901. While the prohibition on cars wasn’t directly linked to Mackinac’s time as a national park, it was partially rooted in the same goal: to preserve the island’s peaceful nature and quaint charm. Automobiles—then called “horseless carriages”—were loud and dangerous. (Horse-drawn carriage drivers, Brisson notes, were also motivated by greed, since giving tours was—and still is—big business.)

Visiting Mackinac Island is like traveling back in time. The streets are still narrow and lined with historic buildings, many of which travelers can explore or, at least, admire from the outside. The Biddle House, built around 1780, now houses the Mackinac Island Native American Museum, while the McGulpin House, which dates to 1790, has been preserved as an architectural artifact. Fort Mackinac is open daily during the summer and fall, offering cannon and rifle firing demonstrations, tours by costumed interpreters, exhibitions, films, and other programming. And just like their 19th- and 20th-century predecessors did, today’s vacationers can stroll the woods on abundant hiking trails, ride bikes along the lakeshore, sit on the Grand Hotel’s front porch and marvel at Arch Rock.

For an even deeper immersion into Mackinac’s past, travelers can check into historic accommodations like the Island House Hotel (built in 1852), the Hotel Iroquois (built in 1902) and the 138-year-old Grand Hotel. “It’s all real,” says Tagatz, the Grand Hotel’s historian. “We’ve got a thin veneer of tourism all over Mackinac Island with the fudge shops and the T-shirt shops. But the majority of those buildings are 150, 160 years old. People seek that out—what’s real, what’s genuine, what’s honest. And we wouldn’t have that today if not for this decision way back 150 years ago to protect and preserve it.”

View of Mackinac Harbor today Courtesy of the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau