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AJ Jones: As temperatures warm and tourism shifts into high gear, many are making their plans to visit Michigan's iconic Mackinac Island. One highlight for visitors is the annual Lilac Festival running through this weekend. Frank Boles is the former director of Central Michigan University's Clark Historical Library. He recently published a new book about the history of tourism on the island. Boles spoke with WCMU's David Nicholas. The conversation began with Bowles breaking down the first cases of the island becoming a destination.
Frank Boles: The first milestone would have been in the 1830s, when a number of travel writers basically decide to visit the Great Lakes because they could do it relatively easily through steam passenger ships, which have regular schedules and begin visiting Mackinac Island. They begin to write travel narratives about the island. It's this exotic, distant place. It's not the Mackinac Island we know of fudges. It's this strange locale somewhere far away from where they have ever been, and they love the place. They just write glowingly about the island. And so, this is the beginning of tourism.
David Nicholas: And correct me if I'm jumping too far ahead in terms of the mile markers, but as the railroads that got people to Mackinaw City and areas where then they could start boarding, were we still talking about steamships or when did we start bringing in anything that would have been seen as a precursor to the ferry service that we all know?
FB: Prior to the railroads, you have to be able to take a couple of days to get to the island. You spend some time there; it's a couple of days back to Detroit or Chicago or Cleveland, depending on where you came from. The railroads, you can do it in a weekend trip. And the railroads bring new clientele, middle class visitors. Those visitors tend to be much more focused, much more direct in what they want to do and see. That's the beginning of the ferry trade as we understand it. Arnold Lines was founded on carrying passengers to Mackinac Island. By the 1890s, on a good day, you can arrive in Mackinaw City, and within an hour be on Mackinac Island.
DN: Now we're realizing we can re-appeal to-
FB: Reappeal and what you see are what today we call the cottages on the West Bluff and the East Bluff being built. These are gigantic things. I mean, multiple thousands of square feet. These are cottages only in the loosest sense of the word. They're beautiful things, and they, as one Petoskey paper puts it, in the 1890s, only the best and richest cottages are built on Mackinac Island with the most beautiful furnishings. There's nothing better. The problem is there's no hotel where the guests of these people can stay. Basically, Mackinac Island's hotels are...let's call them one star. They're not awful. You can get a room, you can get something to eat, and that will be decent enough. But this is not the thing that a member of Chicago's elite is coming to expect. So, the Grand Hotel is sold to 3 transportation companies who are original investors as a destination hotel. Two railroads and a steamship company invest equal portions in building this lavish structure, and it's intended to be lavish. It's modeled after lavish hotels. It's supposed to be the biggest and the best.
DN: A couple of steps above the one star.
FB: A couple above, yes. It's supposed to be, and the interesting thing about the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island is that after they built this wonderful lavish hotel, they realized they'd made a huge mistake. The hotel loses money through most of its early history. It actually goes and is sold in a bankruptcy sale in 1933. They misjudged the market. Although they keep trying to pretend that there's this Chicago elite visiting Mackinac and Detroit elite; the truth is it's not happening. The Grand Hotel by 1910-1915, basic bread and butter isn't elite visitors. It's conventions. It's the Elks and the Knights of Columbus and the bankers who are coming to Mackinac Island. It's a steady trade. They make decent money with it, but it's not what they were set up to build. It's not what they thought they were doing in the 1890s when the hotel was constructed.
DN: At what point would you say in this history, is it what we think of as of today?
FB: The island in the 1920s and early 1930s is in crisis. The number of tourists is not growing as rapidly as the number of visitors to the area. The merchants are beside themselves with concern. In fact, one of the side stories of the book, but one of the most interesting ones, is from the 1920s and 1930s. There is a bitter fight about whether to allow cars on Mackinac Island. And the argument is we got to let them on because all these tourists are just driving by. We have to do something about this. Obviously, that didn't happen. But what does happen in the 1930s is several people in the community say, what's unique about this place? We've got a history and those folks in Mackinac and in Petoskey or Charlevoix or Cheboygan, even St. Ignace, they really don't have the same kind of history. So, they decided to capitalize on history. In the 1950s, the Mackinac Island State Park Commission, with a huge push by Governor G. Menon Williams, says basically, we're going to reconfigure the Park Commission. We're going to focus on history. We're not going to forget about beauty. We're still going to have trails for horses to amble down. We're still going to have lovely carriage tours available for people. But we're going to have military reenactors. We're going to rebuild the museum inside the fort. We're going to rebuild the fort that was once in Mackinaw City. So, there's this tremendous emphasis on history and historic tourism that begins in the 1950s and really continues to this day. That's where modern Mackinac comes from. It's also where fudge comes from. Although fudge was introduced in the 1880s on Mackinac Island, it was invented elsewhere. It's not a Michigan invention.
DN: Although some would like to claim it.
FB: But basically, it's a kind of a sideline candy until about the 1940s and 50s when it takes on that iconic status that it now has. Everybody has to buy a pot, their slab of fudge where they go to Mackinaw City or Mackinaw Island or Saint Ignace. It doesn't matter. You got to come up with that slab of fudge. But that's really the invention of the 1950s and people who got to be known in that period as the fudge barons. The fudge barons sort of come up with this wonderful idea that you have to have fudge. Fudge becomes wildly popular, still is.
DN: As you say, then it's just kind of an extra catch on that becomes as much a part of the attraction. I mean, we all grew up with it, but to think of that pre-fudge and post-fudge as to how we would think of the whole culture, the whole mystique, the whole appreciation of that beautiful place.
FB: Well, there's a decision made in the 1960s and 70s on the island to essentially encapsulate the island as a Victorian architecture.
DN: Visiting Mackinac: 150 Years of Tourism at Michigan's Fabled Straits...Frank Boles, the author of this book, available now. And thank you so much for telling us a little bit of the history. Dare we say there is so much more within the pages, but at least a little bit of a peek inside to that timeline that we know as Mackinac Island.
FB: Well, thank you for the opportunity, David. I appreciate it.
