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 "Great 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 colonization began in the 17th century. It was a strategic center 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.
Mackinac County is a county in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,834. The county seat is St. Ignace. Formerly known as Michilimackinac County, in 1818 it was one of the first counties of the Michigan Territory, as it had long been a center of French and British colonial fur trading, a Catholic church and Protestant mission, and associated settlement.
St. Ignace is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Mackinac County. The city had a population of 2,306 at the 2020 census. St. Ignace Township is located just to the north of the city, but the two are administered autonomously.
Mackinaw City is a village at the northernmost point of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, United States. Divided between Cheboygan and Emmet counties, Mackinaw City is the located at the southern end of the Mackinac Bridge, which carries Interstate 75 over the Straits of Mackinac to the Upper Peninsula. Mackinaw City, along with St. Ignace, serves as an access point to Mackinac Island. For these reasons, Mackinaw City is considered one of Michigan's most popular tourist attractions.
Jacques Marquette, S.J., sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded Saint Ignace. In 1673, Marquette, with Louis Jolliet, an explorer born near Quebec City, was the first European to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley.
Fort Michilimackinac was an 18th-century French, and later British, fort and trading post at the Straits of Mackinac; it was built on the northern tip of the lower peninsula of the present-day state of Michigan in the United States. Built around 1715, and abandoned in 1783, it was located along the Straits, which connect Lake Huron and Lake Michigan of the Great Lakes of North America.
Basilica of Sainte Anne de Détroit (Sainte-Anne-de-Détroit) was founded July 26, 1701 by French colonists in New France, and is the second-oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the United States. The current Gothic Revival cathedral-styled church, built in 1886, is located at 1000 St. Anne Street in Detroit, Michigan, in the Hubbard-Richard neighborhood, near the Ambassador Bridge, and the Michigan Central Station. At one time it was the seat of a diocese that included French territory in Ontario, Canada south of the Detroit River.
Michilimackinac is derived from an Ottawa Ojibwe name for present-day Mackinac Island and the region around the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Early settlers of North America applied the term to the entire region along Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior. Today it is considered to be mostly within the boundaries of Michigan, in the United States. Michilimackinac was the original name for present day Mackinac Island and Mackinac County.
Fort Michilimackinac State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located in Mackinaw City along the Straits of Mackinac. The park contains Fort Michilimackinac, which itself is dedicated a National Historic Landmark and Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse as well as the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse Signal Tower which contains a foghorn.
The Diocese of Marquette is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church, encompassing the Upper Peninsula region of Michigan in the United States. The diocese is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Detroit. Its cathedral is St. Peter Cathedral in Marquette, which replaced Holy Name of Mary Pro-Cathedral at Sault Ste. Marie.
Fort de Buade was a French fort in the present U.S. state of Michigan's Upper Peninsula across the Straits of Mackinac from the northern tip of lower Michigan's "mitten". It was garrisoned between 1683 and 1701. The city of St. Ignace developed at the site, which also had the historic St. Ignace Mission founded by Jesuits. The fort was named after New France's governor at the time, Louis de Buade de Frontenac.
Fort St. Joseph is a former British outpost on the southernmost point of St. Joseph Island in Ontario, Canada, on Lake Huron. The fort consisted of a blockhouse, powder magazine, bakery building, Indian council house and storehouse surrounded by a palisade.
Magdelaine La Framboise (1780–1846), born Marguerite-Magdelaine Marcot, was one of the most successful fur traders in the Northwest Territory of the United States, in the area of present-day western Michigan. Of mixed Odawa and French descent, she was fluent in the Odawa, French, English and Ojibwe languages of the region, and partnered with her husband. After he was murdered in 1806, she successfully managed her fur trade business for more than a decade, even against the competition of John Jacob Astor. After retiring from the trade, she built a fine home on Mackinac Island.
The Mission Church is a historic Congregational church located at the corner of Huron and Tuscott Streets on Mackinac Island, Michigan, United States. Built in 1829, it was the oldest surviving church in the state of Michigan. In 1971, the Mission Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The St. Ignace Mission is located in a municipal park known as Marquette Mission Park. It was the site of a mission established by Jesuit priest, Father Jacques Marquette, and the site of his grave in 1677. A second mission was established at a different site in 1837, and the chapel was moved here in 1954. The second mission chapel is the oldest Catholic church in Michigan and Wisconsin. The St. Ignace Mission was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1956, and was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmarks in 1960, one of the earliest sites recognized. The mission chapel serves as the Museum of Ojibwa Culture.
L'Arbre Croche, known by the Odawa people as Waganagisi, was a large Odawa settlement in Northern Michigan. The French called it L'Arbre Croche for the large crooked tree that marked the center of the settlement and was visible for many miles. It covered the region from Harbor Springs to Cross Village in present-day Emmet County, Michigan.
The McGulpin House is a historic house museum, located in a structure originally built before 1780 and now located at the corner of Fort Street and Market Street on Mackinac Island, Michigan. It is owned, operated, and opened to the public during the summer months by Mackinac Island State Park as part of Historic Downtown Mackinac Island.
Holy Name of Mary Proto-Cathedral, also known as St. Mary Proto-Cathedral, is a historic Roman Catholic parish church in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, United States, that was formerly a cathedral church and the first cathedral, hence "proto-cathedral", of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Marquette. It is the oldest parish and oldest cathedral parish in Michigan, and the third oldest parish in the United States. While the present church edifice, the fifth for the parish, dates from 1881, the parish began in 1668 as a Jesuit mission. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and designated a State of Michigan historic site in 1989. The proto-cathedral was the (first) cathedral of the Diocese of Marquette when it was denominated the "Diocese of Sault Sainte Marie", which diocesan title is presently that of a titular episcopal see.
