A Look at History
Born in 1908, Loretta Dennany Promoted Land Conservation
BY FRANK STRAUS

This year marks the 100th birthday of Loretta Dennany, one of the best-remembered women of Mackinac Island. Born in 1908, Mrs. Dennany died in 1999.

She was a member of one of Mackinac Island's oldest families. She was a granddaughter of Sheriff Dominick Murray, one of the most successful of the men of Irish ancestry, who came to Mackinac during the potato-famine decades of the early 1800s. The Island and surrounding mainland, Mackinac County, proved to be a welcoming place for these men and women, who had come to North America with very little. Mr. Murray opened a successful Island store, and was elected sheriff in 1858; he served as the region's chief law enforcement officer from the county courthouse, now the Island's old City Hall, on Market Street.

Although the county seat was on Mackinac Island then, Mr. Murray made friends all over the nearby mainland. At that time, St. Ignace was a small village, where fish was packed into barrels and woodburning steam vessels stopped to buy cordwood. Mr. Murray decided this shoreline settlement had commercial potential, and bought some land there. It was on this Murray property in 1877 that excavators discovered the remains of the 17th-century Jesuit chapel of St. Ignace, together with what are believed to be some of the remains of pioneer missionary Father Marquette.

Loretta Dennany's class of 1948-49 at the Thomas W. Ferry School. Mrs. Dennany is standing in the back row, right of center. Her son, John Murray Dennany, a first grade student, is seated at the far right in the first row. (Photograph courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

Sheriff Murray and the family enjoyed a further increase in their status when Dominick became a hotel keeper on Mackinac Island's Main Street, taking advantage of the coming of railroads to the Straits of Mackinac. The current Murray Hotel went up in 1882 - it celebrated its 125th birthday last year.

The Murray family lived in the old Laframboise mansion in what was then called Mackinac Island's "East End," near Ste. Anne's Church. They brought the house closer to its current appearance by adding the columns to the front façade. This Murray house that now serves as the heart of the present-day Harbour View Inn.

The "Murray Road" from Crooked Tree Road to the Soldiers' Garden clearing is probably named after Sheriff Murray, or after the Murray family. Perhaps the road was used to carry vegetables back to Fort Mackinac, as one old tale says the clearing was used by the soldiers as a supplemental farmers' field in the 1800s. The former road now looks more like a trail, but has kept its name to this day.

The year that daughter Loretta was born in 1908, the Murray Hotel and other Mackinac Island tourist businesses were doing good business.

This was the height of Mackinac Island's first, pre- World War I tourist boom. Almost none of the Island visitors that the young Loretta saw with her infant eyes had come by car, as tourists do today; they came by steamboat to the Arnold dock, or by train to Mackinaw City or St. Ignace. St. Ignace had repaid the faith that Sheriff Murray had placed in it back in the 1870s, and had become a thriving lumber-and-tourist town.

The Arnold Line, meanwhile, was shuttling visitors back and forth from the mainland as it does today. In 1908, the ferry boat line acquired a boat named the Chippewa, a familiar name; but unlike today's Chippewa, this Arnold Line vessel burned coal, not diesel fuel.

Loretta eventually married, continuing to live on the Mission Point side of Mackinac Island. This was the side of Mackinac Island called the "East End." During the late 1800s, when the two halves of the harbor town were separated by what is now Marquette Park, only a narrow, gravelly road connected them. The East End was a little farther from the action of downtown Mackinac Island, but had space for householders to spread out and build additions to their homes. Mrs. Dennany and her family lived in an Edwardian house at the foot of historic Mission Hill.

Mrs. Dennany taught first and second grades at the Thomas W. Ferry School (the present Indian Dormitory) until 1950, when she moved her family to Plymouth, Michigan, where she continued to teach school for many years.

From 1908 until 1999, Loretta Dennany saw times change on Mackinac Island. The first tourist boom ended with World War I and, soon afterward, the Great Depression.

The cruise boats that had once sailed to Mackinac Island almost every day during the summer dwindled down to two, the North American and the South American, and then disappeared altogether. Grand Hotel changed hands several times, barely survived the slump, and then blossomed forth into the institution familiar to Islanders today.

With the coming of peace in 1945, Mackinac Island's second tourist boom approached. Year-arounders and longtime residents like Loretta Dennany saw Main Street packed with hundreds of thousands of day-trippers annually. The carriage-ride industry was consolidated into the Mackinac Island Carriage Tours. Many streets and roads on Mackinac Island were paved with asphalted concrete. The Mackinac Bridge stretched, like a steel spiderweb, across the Straits.

The character of the "East End" was changed with the development of what is now Mission Point Resort. Fort Mackinac was refurnished as a historic attraction. New ferry boat lines appeared. The Island became more crowded in summer.

Mrs. Dennany became a strong voice among yeararound Mackinac Islanders for preservation of open space. She joined other local citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to lead the way for redevelopment of the old Island aggregate quarry as "Great Turtle Park" for the benefit of the Island's young people.

By the time Loretta Dennany passed away in 1999, she had seen more than 90 years of history on Mackinac Island. The Island's respect for Mrs. Dennany led to the decision to name the new hiking and fitness trail around Great Turtle Park in her honor. It is now Loretta Dennany Trail.

Hundreds of living members of the Murray family, now living all over the United States, are closely related to Loretta Dennany in various ways. The Murrays have also developed ties through marriage to many of the other old families of Mackinac Island, such as the Chambers family and the Douds.