A Look at History
Scott's Cave, Now Vanished, Was Enjoyed by Early Travelers
BY FRANK STRAUS

"Scott's Cave Road" is today one of Mackinac Island's trunk roads, a main pathway through the woods to the Island's northern and northeastern interior. The road's name memorializes a vanished landmark of Mackinac Island.

As early as 1875, travelers to Mackinac Island were enjoying this large, wave-cut cave. It appears on Disturnell's map and guidebook of the Island published in that year. Disturnell did not know precisely where "Scott's Cave" was; he mistakenly mapped it close to Pointe aux Pins, and all he wrote in his guidebook about the cave was that it was "near [British] Landing." His error was understandable, because the 1875 map indicates that there was no trail to the cave at that time. The nearest well-used trackway to this cave was British Landing Road, from which adventurers made their way to the cave.

The cave may have been known to Mackinac Islanders for a long time. Later guidebooks asserted that the cave was named after a British officer, Thomas Scott of the 53rd Regiment, stationed at Fort Mackinac in 1787. This was after the end of the Revolutionary War, but before the turnover of the fort and Island to the American troops in 1796. So this cave may already have gotten its name before the Americans arrived.

One of the first things that the Americans did was turn over a full square mile of land on the northern side of the Island to the aggressive Michael Dousman, farmer and fur trader. Much of the elevated part of this land parcel, including the part now enjoyed as Wawashkamo Golf Course, was cleared for agriculture before the War of 1812. The slice of lower land below the bluff and adjacent to Mackinac Island's northeast shore, does not appear to ever have been used for farming. Dousman and his family presumably sold timber-cutting rights to this land to the Army at Fort Mackinac, and to townspeople in the village below the Fort. The larger trees around the mouth of the cave were probably cut down at some point for firewood, but the cave was not disturbed. After the old growth was cut down, balsams and other typical second-growth trees began to grow.

Another possibility is that Scott's Cave was named after Captain Martin Scott of the U.S. 5th Infantry, stationed on Mackinac Island in 1842-43. William Cullen Bryant, who visited Mackinac Island in July 1846, was taken on a carriage ride or wagon ride down British Landing Road to the shoreline, and was told that this Captain Scott had commanded the men who had cut this roadway. This information given to Bryant cannot be true, as British Landing Road was already in existence in 1812; but it is quite possible that the 5th Infantry garrison commanded by Scott had done fatigue work, such as firewood cutting, on the Dousman farm in 1842-43, and it is possible that the soldiers had discovered or rediscovered the cave at this time, and that it was named after their commanding officer during that year.

The cave itself was a product of the erosion that accompanied the Nipissing period of high Lake Huron water. This period was a geological interval, centering around the time that we now call 2000 BC, that came long after the melting of the glaciers, but several thousand years before the start of written Mackinac history. During this period, the lake's outlet at Port Huron was not as eroded as it is now, the lake could not drain out toward the ocean as rapidly as it does now, and the lake's level was higher than it is today. The sill of Scott's Cave was 627 feet above sea level, about 49 feet above today's lake level. The cave was worn into the base of the bluff that runs around Mackinac Island; on the Island's northeast side, this bluff's base is well above today's lake level. This bluff's base, 4,000 years ago, was a gravel beach, like the present-day beach in front of Devil's Kitchen. Scott's Cave was formed the same way Devil's Kitchen would be formed later, by waves and wintertime cakes of ice battering the Island's rocky shore. The cave was deeper than Devil's Kitchen, though; maybe the lake storms were fiercer in those days. The cave was 15 feet deep and 10 feet wide, with a ceiling of about nine feet in height.

Soon after the creation of Mackinac National Park in 1875, interest in Scott's Cave grew. Dwight Kelton, in his "Annals of Fort Mackinac," the history and guidebook published in 1882, shows the first trail from British Landing to Scott's Cave. Kelton's map, unlike Disturnell's, shows the cave in its true location, and the trail to the cave, opened between 1875 and 1882, is the northern and western half of Scott's Cave Road, or Scott's Road, as it is often called today.

As visitors to the cave increased in the 1880s, stories about the cave multiplied. Some people called it "Flinn's Cave," for reasons now lost to history. (Another American soldier, Corporal Hugh Flynn, had served at Fort Mackinac until December 1828, when he was murdered inside the Fort by a fellow soldier, but there is no textual evidence connecting the unfortunate corporal with this cave.) Island boys visited the cave. The young diarist Harold Corbusier describes an adventure in 1883 at a deep cave on the opposite side of the Island from the Fort, where he lived; the location matches Scott's Cave.

The construction of Leslie Avenue in 1889 made a second route to Scott's Cave possible. A trail, called "Short Cut Trail" for many decades, ran northwestward from the new avenue to Scott's Cave. A decade later, in 1896-1904, the new Mackinac Island State Park built the new Lake Shore Road, and a third route to the cave would be opened from this well-used highway, directly up a slope from the shore, to the cave nearby. Throughout the first half of the 1900s, every significant Mackinac Island guidebook mentioned Scott's Cave.

The geologist George Stanley, writing in 1945, pointed out Scott's Cave as "an excellent example of Nipissing wave erosion within the [Mackinac] breccia." The 4,000-year-old cave, eroded into Mackinac's hardest rocks, had up until this point stood well the test of time, however, the lifespan of this cave was coming to an end. Bob Benjamin, in his 1952 guidebook, was the last writer to mention the cave. Soon afterward, the level of Lake Huron rose again temporarily, causing damage to Lake Shore Road. The State Park had an emergency need for gravel, and several exposed bluff areas along the eastern shore of the Island were pressed into service. Afew sticks of dynamite made an end of Scott's Cave.

Today, a small clearing at the base of the bluff marks the site of the former cave. The clearing, just west of the point where Scott's Shore Road meets Scott's Cave Road, makes a pleasant overlook for hikers on Tranquil Bluff Trail, on the top of the bluff.