Image source, Getty Images
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- Author, Stephen Starr
- Author's title, BBC Travel*
Michigan, United States, is the cradle of the “Motor City” of Detroit, where companies such as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler were born, and which is often known as “the world capital of the car”. But in front of the northern coast of the State, in Lake Huron, there is a serene and picturesque island that has been attracting travelers for hundreds of years, and that has banned cars since they were invented.
Welcome to Mackinac: a 3.8 km2 island where 600 people live all year old, there are no motorized vehicles and has the only American road where it is not allowed to drive. Even golf carts are prohibited in their streets, so most likely, if you hear a horn or chillido, be it from one of the island's geese or owl.
As Urvana Tracey Morse, owner of a craft store on the main street, “here the horse is the king.”
According to the local tradition, when in 1898 a car petarded and scared nearby horses, the authorities of the people banned internal combustion engines, and the measure spread to the rest of the island two years later. Since then, the locals have clung to this quiet way of life.
More than a century later, about 600 horses make everything work, from winter to summer, when approximately 1.2 million people embark on a 20 -minute ferry from Mackinaw City or St Ignace, in the high Peninsula of Michigan, and reach the small town (also called Mackinac Island), at the southern end of the island.
There, visitors buy the famous caramel of the town, explore their 110 km of trails and soak up the sounds of a simpler era.
Image source, Getty Images
“The horses are used in everything, from the withdrawal of garbage to Fedex deliveries,” says Morse, who has been selling art, jewelry and other goods after visiting the island for the first time as a university student in 1990.
“This is how our lifestyle has been; this is our rhythm,” he adds. “A part of us likes the tradition of moving by bicycle, on foot or in taxi on horseback.”
The “place of the great turtle”
For hundreds of years, indigenous communities used the strategic location of the island, at the confluence of Lakes Huron and Michigan, as a place of fishing and hunting. They thought that their limestone cliffs and green forests resembled a giant turtle emerging from the water, so they called her Michilimackckinac or “place of the great turtle” in Anishinaabeabemowin.
The British forces shortened the name and established a strong defensive on the island in 1780. Currently, visitors can follow the disguised performers, see cannon shots and visit the rooms of an officer inside the oldest building of Michigan. But more than 200 years after the US took control of Mackinac, after the war of 1812, its indigenous roots remain.
“Mackinac Island is one of the most important and prominent places in Anishnaabe history and culture,” says Eric Hemenway, an Anishnaabe member who has played a decisive role in the recovery of the indigenous history of the island.
“The Anishnaabek people have been in the Strait (the river routes that connect the Huron and Lake Michigan) since time immemorial, some say. And we continue to be in the place of our ancestors, here in the narrow. The waters were and continue to be the highway of the west medium,” he explains.
As Hemenway points out, a large number of indigenous burials have been found on the island, some of which date back about 3,000 years ago. “(Mackinac) is one of our most sacred places in the great lakes,” he says.
Image source, Getty Images
Hemenway has also worked on the development of Biddle House, which houses the American native Mackinac Island, opened in 2021.
“My greatest success is when I see other natives … this is our story,” says Hemenway.
Varied offer
At the end of the 19th century, Mackinac island had become a place of recreation for wealthy industrial families in Chicago, Detroit and other parts of the once west medium, which came to the island in summer to relax in its pristine waters.
The Grand Hotel de Mackinac, 138 years old, has individually decorated rooms and presumes to have the longest porch in the world. It is also one of the last hotels in full functioning of the golden age of industrial America.
Such is the unique attraction of the Grand Hotel that the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, recently went to the social network X (former Twitter) to propose to the island as the stage of the fourth season of the series “The White Lotus”.
Although the proposal was fun, Morse does not want Mackinac to become a massive tourist destination. “One is proud of the place where he lives, but at the same time I don't want to tell people how beautiful it is,” he says.
Indeed, this small island has a lot to offer. 80% of the Mackinac surface is occupied by the Mackinac Island State Park, where visitors can walk through centenary forests, admire imposing limestone pillars and hiking, riding a bike or renting a horsepower car to photograph one of the most famous attractions of the island: the Arch Rock, 15 meters wide.
Image source, Getty Images
The locals also suggest to go to the north to travel the road of about 13 km turned into a path for bicycles and hikers that runs through the circumference of the island and offers views of the Mackinac Collant Bridge, eight kilometers long, and access to quiet beaches covered with winks and forests.
Leaving horses aside, the 1,500 rental bicycles of the island are the main means of transporting residents and visitors, a self -propelled means of transport that shows that Mackinac inhabitants are delighted to move at a different rate from that of the rest of the country.
Living in a place without cars is one of the main reasons why Morse, who bike nine months a year, has decided to live all year on the island, despite the hard winters.
“I love the idea of getting on the bike and getting off (to the town) among the trees. It prepares me for the day,” he says. “You are always greeting and talking to people.”
Time trip
But although cycling is the easiest and most popular means of transport, bicycles clearly play a secondary role on the island.
“Without horses, this place would not be what it is. It is what makes you feel that you have backed up in time when you get off the ship and you hear that 'clip clip',” says Hunter Hoaglund, who works at Arnold Freight, a company that has been serving Ferry service to the island for 140 years and that every April embark on a herd of its horses that pass the winter in the upper peninsula in the upper peninsula in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
“Every day our trucks appear here (to leave the horses) and in next month they probably appear between 200 and 300 more,” he explains.
It is estimated that between 20 and 30 horses they remain on the island during winter to collect the garbage, deliver packages and keep the island in operation.
Surrounded by crystalline waters, Mackinac can be periodically isolated from the continent in winter, when iceberries interrupt the transforder services to or from the island.
Image source, Getty Images
But in spring and summer, Mackinac comes alive.
The dozens of lilacs that splashed the streets of the town begin to bloom in June, on the eve of the popular La Lila Festival, of 10 days.
Star observers are directed at Fuerte Holmes from Mackinac, the highest point of the island, and the Grand Hotel cupola bar to contemplate without filters the night sky of northern Michigan.
But for most visitors, happily exhausted after touring the island by bicycle, it is best to enjoy an ice cream or a piece of caramel in front of the sports port.
And all this without the sound of the engine of a car that spoils the experience.
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