Mission Point (Mackinac Island)

Mission Point
This jetty is the western boundary of Mission Point. Looking east, this 1969 view shows the Mackinac College campus, with the Peter Howard Memorial Library and Clark Center. Robinson’s Folly, the eastern boundary of Mission Point, is in the background.
Map of Mackinac Island, MI, by Morgan H. Wright, E.M., Marquette, MI.
Country	United States
State	Michigan

Coordinates: 45°51′02″N 84°36′24″W / 45.8506°N 84.6067°W / 45.8506; -84.6067

Mission Point is located on the southeast side of Mackinac Island, Michigan. It is approximately 21 acres in size between Robinson’s Folly and the jetty terminating near Franks Street. The Island has a history of documented European development beginning with French Jesuit missionaries landing at the point in 1634, less than two decades after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock on the East Coast of North America.

Since that time, development at Mission Point has included a Mission House, summer house, several summer Victorian cottages, conference center for an international group, theater, film studio, college campus, and vacation resort. Mission Point looks out toward Round Island (Michigan) over the Straits of Mackinac, the principal waterway between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. In the early 21st century, Mission Point has been developed as Mission Point Resort, a full-service facility including guest lodging, three restaurants, putting greens, a museum, and a theater.

For millennia before the arrival of Europeans, Mackinac Island was home and meeting place for Chippewa (Anishinaabeg), Huron, Menominee, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Ottawa, and other Native American Indian tribes. They enjoyed aurora borealis displays, pure fresh water, ice-locked winters, quiet snow storms, spring trees and birds, pleasant summers, and autumn leaves. These were described in a reminiscence by an Indian chief: “Great Spirit allowed a peaceful stillness to dwell around thee, when only light and balmy winds were permitted to pass over thee, hardly ruffling the mirror surface of the waters that surrounded thee; or to hear by evening twilight, the sound of the Giant Fairies as they, with rapid step and giddy whirl, dance their mystic dance on thy limestone battlements. Nothing then disturbed thy quiet and deep solitude but the chippering of birds and the rustling of the leaves of the silver-barked birch.”Jean Nicolet and Father Barthélemy Vimont were the first Europeans known to pass through the Straits of Mackinac (1634–1635). They were guided there by a small group of Huron Indians 14 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Other French colonists had settled in eastern Quebec. In 1642, Fr. Vimont documented the trip in ‘The Jesuit Relations’ (Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France). Near Mackinac Island, Nicolet and his companions encountered members of the peaceful Ho-Chunk Nation (Winnebago Tribe).