THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 18, 1996 TAG: 9608170064
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GREG RAVER-LAMPMAN, TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 184 lines
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, wealthy fur trappers, Chicago socialites, railroad executives and steamship captains lounged on the 660-foot-long porch of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, surrounded by thousands of red and pink geraniums, rocking on ladder-back chairs as horse-drawn carriages clattered up the hill.
In the century since, not much has changed on this island in the Straits of Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw), where lakes Michigan and Huron converge and which separate the lower part of Michigan from its upper peninsula.
On a recent summer evening, the Grand Hotel's concierge, bedecked in brass-buttoned livery that would have seemed natural at the turn of the century, hailed a taxi. The taxi pulled up, announcing its arrival with clopping hooves and jangling bridles.
To the east, red-and-yellow taxis lined the tree-shrouded roadway to the village. All the taxis are drawn by teams of horses.
On Mackinac Island, such transportation is not a quaint affectation reserved for tourists. One carriage lumbers up the hill with a huge, heavy concrete drain pipe. Behind it, a carriage clopped along carrying a uniformed UPS employee surrounded by parcels.
On Mackinac Island, it has always been thus. When automobiles were invented, Mackinac Islanders voted to ban them from the island, fearing they would frighten the horses. While other communities may have done the same for a short time, Mackinac Island's 1898 resolution has stood the test of time. The only motor vehicles permitted on the island today are snowmobiles.
On warm summer evenings, as you walk around Mackinac Island, or linger along its shoreline, what's most striking is what's not there. No hum of traffic. No far-off horns honking. No rush, because there is no way to rush faster than you can pedal a bicycle or ride a horse.
Carolyn Artman, who works in the historic Fort Mackinac, can't help comparing the island to the far more publicized Martha's Vineyard, the trendy New England summer vacation haunt for the rich.
``I've been there, and I think it's beautiful,'' Artman said, making an effort to be as complimentary as possible. ``But it's so crowded with cars.''
Artman speaks the word ``cars'' as if it were a profanity, an impurity, a defilement. After a few days on Mackinac Island, it's easy to appreciate that sentiment.
Mackinac Island has restaurants, luxury hotels, taverns, marinas, but it's a civilization built without that one element that defines so much of America. Adjoining many of the homes are stables, not elaborate paddocks for show horses, but working stables for the carriages of working people.
At first, Mackinac Island might seem like a tourist resort designed by Disney, but such an image belies the grit and authenticity of Mackinac Island's history.
Long considered sacred by the Chippewa Indians, Mackinac Island got its first taste of European civilization in 1780 when British fur traders feared attacks by Indians, as well as American rebels fighting for independence.
They abandoned the settlement of Michlimackinac on the Michigan mainland and moved to Mackinac Island. They even dismantled their church, St. Anne's, dragging it across the frozen Lake Michigan. Using limestone from a quarry on the Island, British soldiers built Fort Mackinac on a bluff overlooking the island's blue-water harbor. The name Mackinac comes from the Chippewa word for turtle, a word used to describe the profile of the island in Lake Michigan.
Mackinac Island's location made it a key outpost for North America's burgeoning fur trade. The surrounding lakes and rivers gave fur traders navigable access west to Minnesota and south to St. Louis. Canoes brought supplies from Albany or Montreal, including goods that Indian hunters exchanged for pelts of mink, muskrat, otter and beaver.
Fort Mackinac, built largely to protect British fur traders, proved to be impregnable. Constructed of logs and limestone, Fort Mackinac held off American attempts at invasion. After years of wrangling, and one re-occupation by the British, Mackinac Island eventually was given to the newly formed United States under terms of a treaty.
Fort Mackinac, which has never been allowed to fall into disrepair, is the best-preserved 18th century fort in the United States. Inside its stone walls are barracks, the post hospital, the quartermaster's store house, the bath house, gun platforms and a commissary. Spike-helmeted guards demonstrate rifle and cannon firing, as well as playing period instruments, including bagpipes.
``People all talk about Williamsburg as this historical Mecca, but we aren't too shabby,'' said Artman as she strolled among the whitewashed limestone walls of Fort Mackinac.
After the British left for good, Americans took over fur trading that had been dominated by the British and French. One of the most influential Americans was a German immigrant and former baker's boy, whose American Fur Company came to dominate Mackinac Island's economy.
The immigrant, John Jacob Astor, ended up virtually monopolizing the American fur trade. Astor, America's first self-made millionaire, left behind a dynasty whose breathtaking wealth continues to this day.
Evidence of 19th century wealth can be seen on Mackinac Island's hilly shores. Victorian manses with sprawling porches and three-story fairytale towers sit surrounded by lush gardens with wild roses, yellow buttercups, flaming Indian paintbrush.
Mackinac Island's tourist trade exploded in 1887. Two railroad companies, the Michigan Central Railroad and the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, and a steamship company, The Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Co., needed to create an exotic vacation spot to fill their trains and ships. They chipped in to to build the Grand Hotel, modeled after ``grand hotels'' opening in Paris, Cannes, Lucerne, Venice, London and San Francisco.
The hotel itself is an architectural tour de force. The builder, Charles Caskey, opened his own timber mill in Canada, cut and prepared the logs, and hauled them across the ice in the winter of 1886 and 1887. In the spring, he shipped in 300 workers, all the windows, finishing wood and tools. They built the magnificent hotel in just three months.
The Grand Hotel has windows of French plate glass with wood trim. Floors are made of inlaid wood. Woodwork is finished in oil. The dining room is 213 feet long, 70 feet wide, with 27-foot ceilings. The gardens overflow with geraniums, the Grand Hotel's trademark. To this day, the Grand Hotel boasts the world's longest covered porch.
Soon after the Grand Hotel opened, The Chicago Sunday Herald began to provide readers with lists of prominent Chicagoans registered there. The handful of permanent residents, who had made their money in the fur trade, began to make cash in the summer escorting tourists on horse-drawn buggies. Great Lakes steamships from as far away as Montreal brought tourists to the island. Grand Hotel guests rented bicycles and pedaled an eight-mile loop around the island, looking over magnificent vistas of the Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
The Grand Hotel made tourism an essential element of the island's economy. The new hotel created such a huge demand for summer workers that hundreds were imported from as far away as Jamaica. Other tourist-related business sprang up. Elegant hotels and bed-and-breakfasts line curving, lilac-lined roads. From spring to fall, Mackinac Island's streets teem with the crews of sailboats whose masts bristle in the harbor.
The Grand Hotel has been host to many celebrities, including presidents Clinton, Bush, Ford, Kennedy and Truman.
Although the town was gussied up, it still retains many of the buildings of the 1820s frontier trading village. To this day, when you ask for a phone number, you get only four digits, because all numbers on the island have the same prefix, 847.
Today, the most popular hotels on the Island are the Grand Hotel and the Mission Point Resort, a crisp, whitewashed colony capped with cardinal-red rooftops and cupolas.
The Mission Point Resort took over the sprawling facilities of an idealistic group that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. The complex includes a sound stage, a theater of Norway pine, and a lobby with nine-ton-logs converging at 36 feet, forming a massive 16-sided teepee.
The Grand Hotel maintains standards of 19th century decorum. During evening hours, women are required to wear dresses, men coats and ties.
The Mission Point Resort offers casual elegance. Those who arrive on yachts can dine on prime rib and lobster without having to change their khakis and polo shirts.
Both hotels played a role in one of the Mackinac Island's best-known public relations coups. In 1979, Universal Studios leased the Mission Point Resort sound stage to film ``Somewhere in Time,'' starring Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve. The bulk of the movie was filmed in and around the Grand Hotel.
The movie flopped at the box office, but residents still talk about it fondly. Without prompting, they point out every beach, gazebo, garden, walkway and balcony where Reeve and Seymour stood. They talk about what a gentleman Reeve was, and fret about a riding accident that has left him paralyzed, as if tragedy had struck a personal friend.
The filming of ``Somewhere in Time'' demonstrates just how well Mackinac Island has preserved its 19th century charm. In the movie, Reeve, a young playwright, travels back in time, from the 1970s to 1912. To make that transition plausible, Universal Studios modified some of the traditions of Mackinac Island - to make it seem more modern.
Mackinac Islanders allowed Christopher Reeve to drive an automobile on the island early in the movie, so it would seem like the 1970s. The horse-drawn carriages, the Victorian mansions and the turn-of-the-century elegance of the Grand Hotel made the flashback to 1912 a piece of cake.
As far as the islanders are concerned, there's no need to follow up with any other nationwide public-relations blitz. After all, the tourist season is relatively short, from May until October. Despite rates starting at about $300 a night per couple, and ranging up to thousands of dollars per night, the 324-room Grand Hotel has an occupancy rate of about 96 percent, a rate that would make most hoteliers salivate.
Most hotels and restaurants make enough money in the summer months to allow their owners to live in comfort during the winter.
Len Trankina, a small man with gray hair and goatee, is the executive director of the Mackinac Island Chamber of Commerce, the man designated as the island's chief booster. Not even Trankina sees the need for a hard sell or any kind of concerted publicity campaign.
Mackinac Island, he's convinced, sells itself.
``We don't have any roller coasters, but we have young people, and old people, and we probably have more weddings than any place in the country,'' said Trankina. ``We've got a lot of notoriety without really trying, because this is such a strange place.'' MEMO: ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by GREG RAVER-LAMPMANN (sic)
Horse-drawn taxis carry guests to and from the Grand Hotel, which
has been host to many luminaries
Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island lies in the Straits of
Mackinac, where lakes Michigan and Huron converge.
Map by CNB