Mackinac Island Banned Cars in 1898, and Old Midwest Money Has Summered There Ever Since

Mackinac Island sits in the strait between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas, reachable only by ferry from the mainland or by small aircraft to its own airstrip. There is no bridge onto the island itself, and there hasn't been a private car on it since 1898, when the village council banned 'horseless carriages' after a series of incidents in which they frightened carriage horses. More than a century on, the ban still holds: bicycles and horse-drawn carriages are the only traffic on M-185, the island's perimeter road and the only state highway in the United States with no motor vehicles at all.

From fort to national park to summer colony

The island's federal history predates its resort era: it became the United States' second national park in 1875, only three years after Yellowstone, before the fort was decommissioned and the land transferred to Michigan as one of the state's first state parks in 1895. That protected status shaped what came next, as Gilded Age industrial families began building elaborate Victorian summer 'cottages' along the island's bluffs, drawn by the cool lake air and a landscape that development couldn't easily reach.

View on Google Maps →

Ford and Wrigley money, kept low-key

Unlike the Hamptons or Palm Beach, Mackinac Island's old money has generally stayed out of the press. Members of the Ford family have kept a summer home on the island for generations, and descendants of the Wrigley chewing-gum fortune have long been associated with its preservation, part of a wider pattern of Midwest industrial families treating the island as a quiet, unphotographed retreat rather than a place to be seen.

The Grand Hotel, built in 93 days

The island's best-known building, the Grand Hotel, opened on 10 July 1887 after a construction period of just 93 days, commissioned by a consortium of railroad and steamship companies that saw the island's tourism potential. Its front porch, running roughly 660 feet along the building's lake-facing side, remains the structure most associated with the island, and the hotel still enforces a formal dinner dress code that dates back to its Gilded Age origins.

A resort economy without the traffic

With no cars to move goods, deliveries, luggage and even fudge-shop supplies still arrive by horse-drawn dray, a logistics system that has quietly persisted since the nineteenth century and gives the island's commercial streets a texture unlike any other American resort town of comparable size.

Traveller tips

• Ferries run from Mackinaw City and St Ignace on the mainland; there is no vehicle access at any price.
• The Grand Hotel charges day-visitors an entry fee to see its grounds and porch if not staying overnight, and enforces a dress code after 6pm.
• Bicycle rental is the most practical way to cover the island's roughly eight-mile perimeter road.
• Summer weekends draw heavy ferry and hotel demand; book well ahead for July and August travel.