In the midst of "the car capital of the world", there's a serene vehicle-free island home to 600 people, 600 horses and a once-upon-a-time way of life.
Home to the "Motor City" of Detroit, where companies like Ford, General Motors and Chrysler originated, the US state of Michigan is often called "the car capital of the world". But off the state's northern coast in Lake Huron is a serene, scenic island that has been luring travellers for hundreds of years – and has banned cars pretty much since they were invented.
Welcome to Mackinac Island: a 3.8-sq-km island home to 600 year-round residents, no motorised vehicles and the only US highway where you're not allowed to drive a car. Even golf carts are prohibited on the island's streets, so chances are if you hear a honk or a screech, it's from one of the island's geese or owls.
But why the absence of autos?
Because as Urvana Tracey Morse, who owns a craft store on the island's main drag, says: "Horse is king here."
According to local lore, when a car backfired in 1898, scaring horses nearby, village authorities banned internal combustion engines, a move that was extended to the rest of the island two years later. Ever since, locals have leaned into this tranquil, once-upon-a-time way of life.
More than a century later, some 600 horses keep things running here every summer, when roughly 1.2 million people board a 20-minute ferry from Mackinaw City or St Ignace on Michigan's Upper Peninsula and descend on the small village (also called Mackinac Island) on the island's southern tip. There, visitors shop for the village's famous fudge, explore its 70 miles of trails and soak up the clip-clopping sounds of a simpler time. In autumn, some 300 of these seasonal four-legged employees start heading back to the mainland, just as they do every year, to signal the end of the tourist season and the coming of winter.
"Horses are used in everything from garbage removal to FedEx deliveries," says Morse, who has been selling scrimshaw, art, jewellery and other merchandise after first visiting as a college student in 1990. "That's how our lifestyle has been; that's how our pace is."
"Part of us just like the tradition that we get around by bike, or we walk or take the horse taxi," Morse adds.
For hundreds of years, Indigenous communities used the island's strategic location at the confluence of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan as a fishing and hunting ground. They thought its limestone bluffs and green forests resembled a giant turtle rising from the water, so they named it Michilimackinac, or "place of the great turtle" in Anishinaabemowin.
British forces shortened the name and established a defensive fort on the island in 1780. Today, visitors can still follow costumed interpreters, experience cannon firings and see an officer's quarters inside the oldest building in Michigan. But more than 200 years after the US took control of Mackinac following the War of 1812, its Indigenous roots remain.
"Mackinac Island is one of the most important [and] prominent places in Anishnaabe history and culture," says Eric Hemenway, an Anishnaabe member who has been instrumental in reviving Indigenous history on the island. "The Anishnaabeek people have been at the Straits [the waterways connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan], some say, since time immemorial. And we are still at the place of our ancestors here at the Straits. The waters were, and continue to be, the highways of the Midwest."
As Hemenway points out, a large number of Indigenous burial sites have been found on the island – some of which go back roughly 3,000 years. "[Mackinac] is one of our most sacred spots on the Great Lakes," he says.
Hemenway has also worked on the development of the Biddle House, which is home to the Mackinac Island Native American Museum that opened in 2021.
"My biggest success [metric] is when I see other Native people come through… this is our story," says Hemenway. "[The island has] a touristy perception now, but the layers to this place are there."By the late 19th Century, Mackinac Island had become a playground for wealthy industrialist families from Chicago, Detroit and other parts of the once-thriving Midwest, who flocked to the island in summer to unwind in its pristine waters.
