Marquette Park & Main Street

Marquette Park & Main Street

Northern Michigan, United States

You're on Main Street, at the foot of the hill, with the harbor on one side and a green park climbing toward that white fort up on the bluff. This is Mile Zero — the whole island loop starts and ends right about here.

You're on Main Street, at the foot of the hill, with the harbor on one side and a green park climbing toward that white fort up on the bluff. This is Mile Zero — the whole island loop starts and ends right about here. And it's the perfect place to explain the single strangest thing about where you're standing, which is the thing you already noticed and can't stop noticing: no cars.

Here's how that happened, and it's pettier than the postcards let on. In the eighteen nineties, getting around this island was a business — a fleet of horse-drawn carriages, hauling tourists up from the docks, and the men who ran those carriages had a very good thing going. Then the automobile showed up. Loud, fast, and absolutely terrifying to a horse. The carriage drivers looked at these machines and did the math, and the math said: this ends us. So in eighteen ninety-eight they went to the village council and got the automobile banned outright. Not for the environment. To protect their monopoly. And the

ban has never been lifted.

Now, you could argue they got lucky — that they banned a nuisance and it happened to make the island magical. Except we have a control experiment, because a couple of years later a wealthy summer man decided the rule didn't apply to him and brought a steam-powered automobile over on the ferry anyway. And it went exactly the way the carriage men said it would. The machin

Hear the full story

Hear this story with audio narration in the Bad Historian app.

Quick Facts

Mackinac Island banned automobiles by village ordinance in 1898, after carriage operators petitioned to protect their business; the ban has never been lifted
M-185, the island's perimeter highway, is the only state highway in the United States where motor vehicles are banned
A summer resident (Earl C. Anthony) defied the ban around 1900 with a steam automobile that spooked horses and caused damage
The Anishinaabe name Mishimikinaak / Michilimackinac means roughly "Great Turtle," from the island's silhouette; the British shortened it to Mackinac
Mackinac Island is called the fudge capital of the world; shops make fudge on marble slabs in the window as theater, and tourists are nicknamed "fudgies"

Featured Tour

Mackinac Island — The Island That Banned Cars

10 stops • 44 min

Location

Northern Michigan, United States

More parks in Northern Michigan

More to explore in Northern Michigan

Arch Rock

Arch Rock

Look up. That's Arch Rock — a natural limestone arch, curving out of the cliff a hundred and forty-six feet above the water, with nothing but blue lake and blue sky framed inside it.

British Landing

British Landing

You've made it to British Landing — the far side of the island, right about the halfway mark of the loop, and a good place to catch your breath. There's a nature center here, and restrooms, and usually something cold to drink.

Clinch Park and the Bay

Clinch Park and the Bay

You're at Clinch Park, right on the edge of West Grand Traverse Bay. That building behind you showing movies — the Bijou by the Bay — has one of the best origin stories in town, and it belongs to a man named Con Foster.

Devil's Elbow

Devil's Elbow

Slow down. The road is about to double back on itself in one of the sharpest curves on the whole route, a real white-knuckle hairpin, and there's a name for this spot that the highway crews and the locals have used for well over a century.

Devil's Kitchen

Devil's Kitchen

You're on the west shore now, and there are two things to look at. Close up, right off the road, there's a small dark cave scooped into the rock — that's Devil's Kitchen.

Fort Mackinac

Fort Mackinac

You climbed the hill, and it was worth it. You're at Fort Mackinac — long white limestone walls, black cannon pointing out over the harbor, the whole town and the blue straits laid out underneath you. It is a genuinely commanding position.

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