Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: mihistoricsites

Mackinac Island's in the strait which connects Lake Huron with Lake Michigan. It's been a tourist desitination about as long as there've been white settlers in Michigan. The island was fortified in the eighteenth century, was a national park from 1875 through 1895, and has been a Michigan state park for well over a century. Horseless carriages were banned about the time they became common, and the island's roads are populated by horses, carriages, and bicycles. So the place has a Victorian look and feel, and enough authentic history to keep a tourist busy just wandering from site to site. But the real attraction is the scenery; it's a wonderful place. This photo's from the Lilac Festival Parade, which occurred in the rain on June 18 this year. It's really like most small-town parades, except there were more tourists. And no fire trucks.

Mackinac Island in the rain....

Replaced by the New Light in 1871, and long since a museum. We were a little annoyed by the bait-n-switch tactics of the historical society--the roadside sign didn't mention the (quite reasonable, actually) fee, so we shot this from the beach, down the road. On Lake Huron, between Alpena and Rogers City, Michigan.

What was once the office of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company; it's now home to the Keweenaw National Historical Park. Calumet, Michigan.

Another Upper Peninsula State Park. Fayette's Michigan's best ghost town; just an incredibly photogenic place, built around a reasonably intact charcoal blast furnace complex. Photo taken in June of 1998. The stone building in the foreground is the ruin of the company store and warehouse. The wooden structure served, among other things, as town hall and opera house. Camera: Nikon N90s

At Frankfort (foreground) and Elberta, Michigan, in 1991. The ship had recently been appointed a National Historic Landmark. City of Milwaukee was built in 1930 for the Grand Trunk Railway, and ended her career in 1981 when the State closed down the Ann Arbor Railroad ferry operation. She sat there in the Frankfort harbor for nearly two decades, then moved to Manistee. She's functioning now as a museum . The alert reader will notice that the two sites I've linked to show slightly different dates for "built" and "retired." Such is life, I guess.