A Look at History
Long Ago, Tourists Avoided Visiting Mackinac Island in June
BY FRANK STRAUS

Mackinac Island is crowded in June. Thousands of tourists flock to Main Street, Market Street, Fort Mackinac, Surrey Hills, Grand Hotel, and many other favorite destinations, however, June wasn't always this way on Mackinac Island. For the first 100 years of the Island's history as a travel destination, June was part of the "shoulder season" and not a prime period to visit Mackinac Island.

It's a historical fact, attested to by Grand Hotel's records, that when the hotel was first built, it opened for the season, not in March as it does now, but in the beginning of July. In the 1880s, the hustle of Main Street's visitation season was pretty much confined to July, August, and perhaps the first week or two of September. Grand Hotel's short operating season played a key role in the failure of the hotel to make money during its first 50 years. Similarly, the work of local businesspeople, including W. Stewart Woodfill of Grand Hotel, played a key role in extending Mackinac Island's "season" and enabling the Island to greet more people every year.

This is the 22nd Regiment on the parade ground north of Fort Mackinac in 1874. (Photographs courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

When Grand Hotel opened in the 1880s, most of Mackinac Island was owned by the federal government and controlled by the U.S. Army. Mackinac Island was officially a National Park, but there was no National Park Service in the 19th century. Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mackinac Island, and the other national parks were guarded and patrolled by troops, and the desire to welcome people to the Island had to be compromised with the need for national security.

When Fort Mackinac was first occupied by American soldiers in 1796, the job of keeping troops disciplined for battle was largely carried out by the act of drilling the young men. The solders, armed with smoothbore muskets, were taught to march, load, and fire their weapons in close formation. Two "Parade Grounds" were cleared and made level for this purpose, one of them, the smaller one, inside Fort Mackinac itself, and the other one behind the Fort, where the Scout Barracks and a baseball diamond stand today. The residual custom of having soldiers line up in close order for "inspection" is a relic of the military science of this era, 200 years ago.

The rifle range with the target platform in foreground, circa 1880.

The Civil War, however, taught American military leaders, both North and South, of the obsolescence of close-order drill. The invention of rapid-firing, rifled long guns had made it possible for sharpshooters to stop men who advanced, charged, or fired their weapons in close formation. It became much more important to teach the soldiers how to shoot accurately at a target and how to move through a battleground, such as a wooded area, with as little noise as possible.

From the 1870s until the abandonment of Fort Mackinac in 1895, Mackinac Island had to share itself during the warm months with two very different groups of people who came to the Island with different purposes. One group, the tourists, were made up of men, women, and children who came to the Island to amuse themselves and see a unique community and way of life, much as their great-grandchildren do today. The other group was the soldiery at Fort Mackinac. Time had to be set aside for them during the warm months to use Mackinac National Park as a training ground for active combat under modern conditions.

This was the period of time when the rifle range was in active use. Sharpshooters gathered at the lower end of the range and fired live ammunition at targets erected hundreds of feet away. The rifle range has remained cleared ground to this day. Another, now-vanished firing range was cut through the woods from what is now the intersection of Rifle Range Road and Sugar Loaf Road northerly to a rocky outcrop, Pulpit Rock, that now stands buried in the forest northwest of Sugar Loaf. Mackinac Island Town Crier nature columnist Trish Martin often points out the plant and animal life living along this nowvanished rifle range. It's made up of younger second-growth forest, and the plants that grow there are significantly different from the plants that live in other parts of the southeastern quarter of Mackinac Island.

It was not possible for the Fort Mackinac soldiers to practice sharpshooting during times of the year when tourists were enjoying free access to the National Park. I've not found any explicit rules and instructions; everything seems to have been done informally. Mackinac Island's chief tourism destination, Grand Hotel, was controlled by the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads, which had close ties to the administration of President Benjamin Harrison (1889-93). June was informally set aside for sharpshooting and other field exercises that couldn't be performed in the presence of wandering travelers.

By and large, the cottagers didn't mind. June weather wasn't as warm then as it is now, and many of the cottagers had built their new summer homes for health reasons, as well as comfort. Mosquito-borne illnesses and autoimmune problems such as "hay fever" were worse in July and August, when the summer people had free access to the Island. Many of the older cottages were built on land leased from the National Park, in which the cottagers promised to obey all of the National Park's rules. These rules included keeping out of the Army's way.

After 1895, there was no reason for the tourists to avoid Mackinac Island in June any longer. The soldiers had shouldered their rifles and marched off to a new posting. Old habits laid down during the so-called "Golden Era" of Victorian travel to Mackinac Island died hard. The Great Lakes steamships that carried many of the Island's visitors had gotten into the custom of stopping at Mackinac during certain months and not stopping during other months, and Grand Hotel had established its operations on a 60- day schedule.

Cottagers continued to put off coming up to Mackinac Island, often not arriving until early July. Young Lorna Puttkammer, born in 1933, recalls a typical schedule of those days. With two sets of grandparental relatives on the Island and in lower Michigan, she would often spend the first one-third of her summers in South Haven, and the second two-thirds on the Island.

Island business people worked hard during the first half of the 1900s to lengthen the Island's visitation season and encourage more people to come in June. Slowly, the season grew longer, but the Great Depression and World War II disrupted these efforts. It was not until after the war that Islander Stella King, founder of the Mackinac Island Medical Center, organized the Island's Lilac Parade in early June. Mackinaw City also developed its early summer festival, Fort Michilimackinac Days, at this time, and for much the same reasons.

These festivals gave birth to their desired results. Slowly at first, then in a big jump in the 1960s, Island visitation in June grew toward the levels enjoyed today.