Island Horse History ‘as Complicated as Geneology, Says Candice Dunnigan
By Leslie Rott

Candice Dunnigan points to a picture of a horse being washed, a common sight on Mackinac Island, during her lecture, “The Hack on Mack,” Friday, July 29, at the Mackinac Island Public Library.

Most people believe that horses and Mackinac Island are practically synonymous, however, many people are not familiar with the history of horses on the Island. Candice Dunnigan discovered that uncovering the history of horses here is not so easy, and she spoke about some of the intriguing tidbits she has uncovered Friday, July 29, at the Mackinac Island Public Library to a standing-room-only crowd.

Horse history on the Island is as complicated as Mackinac genealogy, Mrs. Dunnigan told the audience. She has been sifting through information on horses and Mackinac since 2003, when she was asked to do a talk about horses by Mackinac State Historic Parks Director Phil Porter.

“There’s a book there,” she thought while sorting it all out.

“Why don’t you write it?” suggested her husband, Brian, and she has been working toward that goal since.

“I keep finding things,” she told the audience.

She said she has found that working chronologically on this project is best and has identified 12 key time periods into which to sort her data, from the 1700s to the present.

Horses were first noted on Mackinac in the 1700s, used to haul Fort Mackinac over the ice from the mainland to Mackinac Island during the American Revolution. They were known as “beasts of burden” and were much smaller than the horses that appear on Mackinac today, Mrs. Dunnigan said.

In the early 1800s, as Mackinac evolved as a city, horses were given as gifts. In the mid-1800s, all major families on the Island had horses and they became status symbols of the well to do. After the 1840s, businesses were using horses for deliveries, and the animals became a commodity.

From the 1870s through 1881, there was an increase in steamship travel on the lakes and more demand for horses. Horses then, Mrs. Dunnigan said, stayed on the Island year-around, unlike today, when most of the horses are taken off the Island in the winter.

By 1881, the railroad had reached Mackinaw City and people began to come in droves. Hotels appeared in 1885 and Grand Hotel was built in 1887.

“A whole different genre of people arrive on this Island,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. That new breed was the cottagers, bringing with them money and a certain aura of elegance and style. There is also a distinct riding talent that emerges.

With all of the new amenities for visitors and Mackinac Island establishing itself as a summer resort, a new occupation is born - sightseeing, and the hacks that gave the tours figured significantly in the motor vehicle ban that exists today on Mackinac Island. They successfully petitioned the city to ban automobiles in 1889, and the Mackinac Island State Park Commission followed suit in 1901.

The livery alliance with the Park went sour, however, when the commission asked sightseeing buggies to chip in $1 a seat annually to help pay for road development and maintenance in the State Park.

“Now the Park and City have never gotten along,” Mrs. Dunnigan jokes with the crowd. When the Park propose the new fee, she said, “The Islanders say ‘bull’ ... And the City loses” in a case that went to the state’s Supreme Court.

Drays were hauling ice to cottagers prior to World War I, she said, and by the 1920s, an undisciplined sightseeing livery organized into the Carriage Association, predecessor to Mackinac Island Carriage Tours.

“From what I’ve found, the 20s were a pretty good, wild time,” Mrs. Dunnigan observed.

After World War II, W. Stewart Woodfill, owner of Grand Hotel and chairman of the Park Commission, promotes Mackinac with “The horse is king.”

“This place doesn’t have automobiles. This place has horses. It starts to intrigue people,” Mrs. Dunnigan tells the crowd. In 1948, Mackinac Island Carriage Tours is born. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Island sees an upsurge in young cottagers with children. “And the kids, of course, all wanted to ride.”

Mrs. Dunnigan said that Mackinac Island became the Michigan version of Dodge City as a loss of that early 1900s elegance is seen. “There’s this western, cowboy feel to the Island,” she recalls.

In the 1970s, the Mackinac Island Horse Show was started and “things die down because these kids grow up.”

In 1979, the movie “Somewhere In Time,” which was filmed on the Island, and the fairy tale wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana put Mackinac back on the map. It becomes the perfect place to get married with a horse and carriage.

“The Hack of the turn of the century is back,” Mrs. Dunnigan, said, excitedly.

From the end of the 1970s until today, the Island sees another change with subdivisions and condominiums and the competing interest of bicycles.

In 1998, a summer riding program was started and the Mackinac Horsemen’s Association was born.

As for the horse culture on the Island, Mrs. Dunnigan said it is “a way of life that in the next five years is going to make it or break it.”

Why “The Hack on Mack?” “Hack,” she said, has several different meanings, all applicable to the Island. It can be a short, quick ride, a hired horse, a pair of horses and a driver, or a breed of horse.

Mrs. Dunnigan first came to the Island in 1958 at the age of three and told her parents that she wanted to ride a horse. She went to the Woodfill stables every day she and her family were here, even though she would not ride a horse until age of five. At the age of 20, she bought a horse at an auction and had to work two jobs to afford to keep the horse.

In 1976, she and her father purchased a cottage and brought the horse over with them. Since that time, her interest in horse culture on Mackinac has blossomed. She began to seriously ride and compete in 1992 and, although she is no longer in competition, her enthusiasm, interest, and dedication to the horse culture on Mackinac is evident in her work.

She said that her research would not have been possible without the utilization of private photo collections and she will probably need another year until her book is ready for publication.