All three of Mackinac Island's foremost sights were built during the late 1800s or are interpreted as if one was visiting them in that period. These sights form key elements in the total-immersion nature of Victorian culture and iconography on Mackinac Island.
The central "village" the entire island has a census population of 483 consists of only two streets, Main Street and Market Street. Most of both streets are lined with shops that depend on the seasonal tourist trade. Main Street has good examples of vernacular false-front commercial architecture of the late 1800s. Many Market Street buildings are even earlier, built during the fur-trade boom of the War of 1812 period. The village is tightly-clustered on the southern end of the island.
On a steep bluff above Main Street is Fort Mackinac. Although the stone walls of the fort were raised by the British Army in 1780-81 in a failed attempt to keep the American "rebels" from gaining control of Michigan, most of the frame buildings inside the fort were built in the 1800s. The Mackinac Island State Park currently 2005 interprets the fort to its life in the 1880s. An admission fee is charged. There are excellent views of the village, Mackinac Bridge, and nearby shipping channel from the fort's walls.
Halfway up another steep hill to the north-west is the Grand Hotel, a substantial 1884 summer "palace" offering upscale accommodation. Visitors often find the hotel, with its record-length front porch, to be an attractive place to appreciate a relatively complete pre-World War I environment. The 1980 Christopher Reeve movie Somewhere in Time is set and was filmed here. An admission fee is charged to non-guests.
The stores, fort, and hotel are open in the late spring, summer, and fall, and closed in the winter and early spring. Most of Mackinac Island's visitors come to the Island between the Lilac Festival early June and Labor Day. During the long cold winters, permanent residents are sometimes forced to follow a path made of discarded Christmas trees over the ice to nearby St. Ignace for supplies.
