Mackinac Island, Michigan, United States

🇺🇸 Mackinac Island is a city in Mackinac County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population numbers in the tens of thousands from May 1st to October 31st due to an influx of visitors and hundreds of seasonal workers.

Established as an important fur trading centre in the eighteenth century, with a predominately French-speaking population of French Canadians and Métis, after the War of 1812 the city gained more Anglo-American residents. The US put restrictions on Canadians for fur trading. From 1818 until 1882 the city served as the county seat of the former Michilimackinac County, which was later organised as Mackinac County, with St. Ignace designated as the county seat. The city includes all of Mackinac Island and it also originally included nearby Round Island which is unpopulated and now federally owned and part of the Hiawatha National Forest. The state park and the national forest make up most of the city.

A unique local ordinance passed in 1898 prohibits the use of any motor vehicles on the island. The only exceptions to this are city emergency vehicles (ambulance, police cars and fire trucks), city service vehicles and snowmobiles during winter. Today the most common means of travel is either by foot, bicycle, horse or horse-drawn carriage. Roller skates and roller blades are also allowed, except in the downtown area. Mackinac Island is home to the Grand Hotel, built during the nineteenth century when the island started to be a summer destination. When the 1980 movie Somewhere in Time was filmed here, the city made an exception to allow the production company to use motorized vehicles on the island.

Mackinac Island is noted for its many fudge shops, a tourist attraction. The island has a large craft industry devoted to making fudge in a traditional manner, creating portions on cold marble slabs. The many varieties are a tourist draw and frequently given as gifts throughout Michigan.

Mackinac Island is an island and resort area, covering 4.35 square miles (11.3 km²) in land area, in the U.S. state of Michigan. The name of the island in Odawa is Michilimackinac and "Mitchimakinak" in Ojibwemowin meaning "Big Turtle". It is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The island was long home to an Odawa settlement and previous indigenous cultures before European colonisation began in the 17th century. It was a strategic centre of the fur trade around the Great Lakes. Based on a former trading post, Fort Mackinac was constructed on the island by the British during the American Revolutionary War. It was the site of two battles during the War of 1812 before the northern border was settled and the US gained this island in its territory.