Qualla: Straits State Park

Straits State Park: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ksblack99, Public domain. Two promises were made and never kept at Straits State Park. Twice, planners agreed to build a pedestrian bridge to reconnect sections of the park that highway construction had severed. Neither bridge was ever built. It is a small irony for a place whose identity is now defined by a bridge -- the Mackinac Bridge, whose five-mile span dominates the view from nearly every campsite and overlook in the park. Established in 1924 on the northern shore of the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Straits State Park has spent a century being carved up, reimagined, and rebuilt, and through it all has remained one of the finest places to watch the sun set behind one of America's most iconic engineering achievements.

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Image: ksblack99 | Public domain

Straits State Park: Where Two Peninsulas Almost Touch

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Marvin Phelps, CC BY 2.0. The Straits of Mackinac are the narrow passage where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron, a bottleneck of open water separating Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. For centuries, this crossing defined travel in the region. The Anishinaabe peoples paddled canoes through the str...

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Image: James Marvin Phelps | CC BY 2.0

Straits State Park: A Park Remade by the Bridge

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Last Cookie, CC BY 2.0. When Straits State Park opened in 1924, it was a simple day-use park at the corner of Paro and Hombach streets. By the mid-1940s, 32 tent campsites lined the shore, drawing families who arrived in St. Ignace aboard car ferries from the Lower Peninsula. The ferry dock sat just hal...

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Image: The Last Cookie | CC BY 2.0

Straits State Park: Marquette's Last Shore

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1975, the decision was made to create the Father Marquette National Memorial on the park's western section, across Interstate 75. Once again, a pedestrian bridge was proposed to link the memorial to the rest of the park. Once again, it was never built. The memorial and its mus...

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Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Straits State Park: Campfire Views of Big Mac

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erik Przekop from Canton, MI, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. The modern park, renovated extensively in the 1970s and again in 2003 and 2004, is organized around its relationship with the Mackinac Bridge. The bridge overlook, an accessible structure with coin-operated binocular scopes, provides a side-on view of the suspension span that loc...

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Image: Erik Przekop from Canton, MI, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Straits State Park: The View from Above

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justin Billau, CC BY 2.0. From the air, Straits State Park reads as a green wedge along the northern shore, bisected by the pale ribbon of Interstate 75 as it feeds into the Mackinac Bridge approach. The bridge itself stretches southwest across the straits, its twin towers rising from the deep blue water ...

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Image: Justin Billau | CC BY 2.0