The Straits of Mackinac have been a tourist destination for more than 150 years. The story of how tourism developed on Mackinac Island and in the adjacent communities of St. Ignace and Mackinaw City is brought to life in this fascinating book, with stories from the people who helped shape it. This complex work explores the factors that shaped this region into the tourist destination that it is today. It includes historical context of how conflicting ideas developed a seasonal tourist industry and examines how tourism at the Straits of Mackinac developed within regional and national contexts as the tourist industry boomed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume also shows how the people at the Straits responded to various national trends, such as when the automobile transformed the tourist experience and when independently published travel literature painted a less-than-rosy picture of the region.

Frank Boles has been involved in preserving and documenting Michigan history for more than forty years. From 1991 until 2021, he served as the director of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University. Prior to coming to the Clarke Historical Library, Frank worked at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. In 2017, he published Sailing into History: Great Lakes Bulk Carriers of the Twentieth Century and the Crews Who Sailed Them, which was named a Michigan Notable Book by the Library of Michigan in 2018.