Mackinac Island Guide

Mackinac Island sits in the Straits of Mackinac between the peninsulas, and its founding rule makes it unlike anywhere else in America: it banned automobiles in 1898, and still has none. You get around by horse-drawn carriage, by bicycle, or on foot, on an island of Victorian hotels, an 18th-century fort, and something like a dozen fudge shops whose smell hangs over the whole downtown (locals call the tourists “fudgies”). The Grand Hotel, opened in 1887, has what’s billed as the world’s longest front porch at some 660 feet. You reach it only by ferry, and the moment you step off and hear hooves instead of engines, you’ve traveled back a century. It is Michigan’s single most beloved place.