0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: When you arrive at Macano Island, the first thing you notice is the way it sounds. 0:11 [SPEAKER_00]: You realize you've never been in civilization for this long. 0:15 [SPEAKER_00]: In towns and streets and restaurants and post offices, without the sound of internal combustion. 0:24 [SPEAKER_00]: without any horns or any amped up stereo systems or traffic jams or the people beside you lip syncing, obnoxious way behind the rolled up windows of their cars. 0:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Five years before Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, a few hours south into 0:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Macanol banned automobiles, and they've been absent from the island ever since. 0:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Everywhere you go on the island, you have to walk, or cycle, or find a horse to carry you. 1:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Horse-drawn carriages remain, much as they were in 1898, the primary mode of public transportation. 1:09 [SPEAKER_00]: The largest engines on Macanol are under the hoods of emergency and service vehicles. 1:20 [SPEAKER_00]: You can have a snowmobile on the winter, when the island is almost empty, and certain kinds of moors are allowed. 1:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you purchase a riding mower in town, or have one shipped to the dogs, they won't even let you drive at home. 1:38 [SPEAKER_00]: You have to either push it to your property, or have it carried there on a horse-drawn trailer. 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So, when I say things sound different on Magna, they really sound different. 1:50 [SPEAKER_00]: They've taken all kinds of precautions, especially downtown. 1:55 [SPEAKER_00]: To protect this soundscape of pre-industrial America. 2:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you can hear ships docking and horse hooves in the streets. 2:06 [SPEAKER_00]: People talking and even foot traffic. 2:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, if you go the wrong time of the year from June to August, you hear less of all of this, and more of the noisy, sweaty tourists who have somehow managed in the crowded mobs of Main Street. 2:24 [SPEAKER_00]: to get between you and your own armpits. 2:28 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you go in the spring or fall, it's lovely. 2:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And after the blunt force trauma of our last few episodes on Beaver, high in North Fox Islands, a little dose of loveliness is exactly what we need. 2:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Macronol Island has it in spades to the point where it's become a pejorative cliché. 2:53 [SPEAKER_00]: If you took the painted Victorian homes of Martha's Vineyard in the Dinti aesthetics of an old-fashioned tea party. 3:02 [SPEAKER_00]: and the artistic sensibilities of all middle-aged Midwestern women. 3:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And you must all of this together in a single island paradise. 3:12 [SPEAKER_00]: You would more or less have macronol island. 3:15 [SPEAKER_00]: As it exists today, imagine a place where all public transportation is war strong, and the rest of the town is organized around that theme. 3:25 [SPEAKER_00]: and the local economy more or less exists to capitalize on this surplus of old-timey charm. 3:33 [SPEAKER_00]: There are flood shops and art boutiques and gift shops and flood shops and art boutiques. 3:42 [SPEAKER_00]: There are short shops and flood shops and cafes and flood shops and art boutiques. 3:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, there are large pained windows full of real estate notices where couples stand for too long, looking ice cream cones and doing the math on the different listings. 4:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Trying to figure out how they might afford a little island retreat, and this increasingly difficult real estate market. 4:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But before we started this series, it was likely that Mackinol was the only Michigan island you had ever heard of. 4:18 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the most iconic of these islands, arguably the prettiest, and certainly the most well known. 4:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And to some degree, this was always the case. 4:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Even before the French arrived in the 1600s, Macanol had a somewhat exalted status. 4:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Native peoples in the Great Lakes region considered Macanol to be the home of the Great Spirit, the giver of life, and native religion. 4:46 [SPEAKER_00]: In native mythologies, it was said to be the first piece of land that reemerged following the Great Flood of World Prehistory. 4:55 [SPEAKER_00]: rival tribes met here as a sacred and neutral sight, and when their chieftons died, their bodies were brought back to Maconol for burial. 5:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The name Maconol itself is from the Ojibua for Big Turtle. 5:11 [SPEAKER_00]: As the island was said to resemble the shape of a turtle shell. 5:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The Ojibua name was originally 5:23 [SPEAKER_00]: than the English with their knack for abbreviation, shortened it to what it is today. 5:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Just as the English once had New England, the French had New France, which extended all the way from Hudson Bay in the north to New Orleans in the south on the Gulf of Mexico. 5:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And the centerpiece of this massive colonial empire was the modern 5:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But then that region, Machinol Island was the first effective centerpiece, located near the intersection of the three greatest lakes, Huron, Michigan, and to the north superior. 6:04 [SPEAKER_00]: all of which situated this 4.3 square mile island in the relative center of France's sprawling new world colony. 6:13 [SPEAKER_00]: As one 17th century Jesuit put it, Macanol was the central point for all travel on the upper Great Lakes and for a vast extent of wilderness and half settled country beyond. 6:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Because of the military significance of this geographical position, the highest point on Machinol is still occupied by British fort, built during the American Revolutionary War. 6:41 [SPEAKER_00]: This fort would see its first and only combat during the War of 1812, when American troops invaded the island on August 4th, 1814. 6:53 [SPEAKER_00]: The battle that ensued, the Battle of Machinol, was erupt. 6:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The Americans were easily defeated, suffering heavy casualties, despite outnumbering the British and native defenders, more than two to one, because Ford Mackinol was seated peaceably to the United States. 7:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In the aftermath of that war, through the Treaty of Ghent, a few months later, it retired from combat and defeated with the career record of one to zero. 7:23 [SPEAKER_00]: A couple of interesting unrelated tidbits, before we move on from Fort Mackinour, just days into the war of 1812, the British had reclaimed Fort Mackinour by surrounding it with forces outnumbering its defenders, tend to one. 7:41 [SPEAKER_00]: It is possible that the American garrison had not even realized they were at war. 7:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The American Commander, who surrendered the fort, was a lieutenant named Porter Hanks. 7:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Following his surrender, Hanks was sent to Detroit to stand before military tribunal, for accusations of cowardice, and spite of the fact that he had managed to negotiate for the lives of his entire garrison in a no-win situation. 8:10 [SPEAKER_00]: While Hank stood in Fort Detroit awaiting court martial, the British launched a sudden attack on that fort as well. 8:18 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the first cannonballs to reach it, towards the wall of the fort, and decapitated Hank's, where he stood, awaiting trial. 8:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Enrich sat irony upon seeing Hanks die, that same general charging Hanks for cowardice turned around and promptly surrendered for it to the same enemy, on the very same terms. 8:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Though of course without saving the lives of all of his men, he would later face the same court martial for cowardice in the Galact of Duty. 8:52 [SPEAKER_00]: On a lighter note, Fort Macano also made unexpected contributions to the medical field of gastroenterology. 9:02 [SPEAKER_00]: About a decade after the War of 1812, the Trader named Alexis St. Martin was waiting in line at the fort to sell his first. 9:10 [SPEAKER_00]: When a nearby musket accidentally discharged into his stomach, the island surgeon, William Beaumont, did his best to close the wound, but the shot had torn too much muscle, and fat off of St. Martin's abdomen to cover his exposed digestive tract. 9:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But rather than dying as he should have, St. Martin lived, with a hole in his stomach that would never close. 9:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Over the next decade, Beaumont performed more than 200 tests on St. Martin's exposed innards to investigate the human digestive tract and his juices. 9:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Among other experiments, Beaumont would lower food on a string into St. Martin's open belly and remove it at different intervals to see how much had been digested. 10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Because of this research, Beaumont is known today as the father of gastric physiology, which, would seem, made Fort Magnale an unlikely headquarters of modern gastroenterology. 10:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, the fort is a museum now, and has more than a dozen active buildings for your perusing pleasure. 10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: About 50 years later, in 1875, Mackinol Island was named after Yellowstone National Park, America's Second National Park. 10:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It was chosen for its natural beauty, and again for its military significance near Americans northern border. 10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: in the event that war broke out on the Canadian border. 10:48 [SPEAKER_00]: The US military could immediately control and arm the island without dealing with local authorities. 10:55 [SPEAKER_00]: and Macanol later became Michigan's first state park in 1895. 11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: When the threat of war with Canada had long passed, and the island transferred back to state control. 11:09 [SPEAKER_00]: As a result of all of this back and forth, the early date of its European colonization, Macanol Island boasts some of the most diverse architecture in the United States. 11:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It has examples of federalist, colonial, tagging it, tutor, queen and stick style, second empire, Richardson, Romanesque, and Greek and Gothic revivals. 11:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, a small abundance of Victorian cottages and shopfronts. 11:42 [SPEAKER_00]: It also houses the only surviving examples of northern French rustic architecture in the country. 11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But before you visit the fort or tour the island's architectural diversity, the first thing you need to do after loading up on all the official state dessert, Fudge, is to run a bicycle and ride the perimeter of the island. 12:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Apart from any of the island's local features or eccentricities, its greatest asset remains the overall atmosphere that you can only find in a place without cars. 12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: There are other forts and other beaches, but there's really no substitute for being in a place that still operates in rhythms and social patterns that disappeared from most of the rest of the world before your grandparents were born. 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The auto revolution, the motorcycle, the space race, and the haunting design of the Pontiac Transan, never happened here. 12:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Magnal Island is above all else, a place that still runs on horse power, not the kind they advertise on TV, but actual physical horse muscle, and not in a rustic kind of way, but like the set of a sappy lifetime movie, only far more enjoyable. 13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Anything you want to do, you have to do like they did a 150 years ago. 13:11 [SPEAKER_00]: any place you want to go, you can go as fast as your bicycle or a horse can carry you. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's worth taking a day or two and getting a B&B for a few nights, or a room at the legitimately gorgeous Grand Hotel, where they filmed that one movie where Christopher Reeves and Dr. Quinn, medicine woman, got lost somewhere in time, can't remember the name 13:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Before we go, I'd like to close with a quick side note that was too good to leave out. 13:43 [SPEAKER_00]: A few years ago, managed journal and explicably listed MacDonald as one of the top motorcycle destinations in the United States. 13:53 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're ever filling down, think of the look on those bikers' faces when they arrived on the island and abruptly tied with a shortest ever-ride motorcycle history. 14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The Detroit Free Press later published their own article with the opening line, if you try to ride a motorcycle on Mac and O' Island, your bike will be impounded. 14:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Our next episode takes us back over to Lake Michigan, to the MENA 2 Islands, and the myth of the Sleeping Bear, from which the Sleeping Bear National Lake Shore, takes its name, MENA 2 Islands.
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