Fort Michilimackinac State Park

About Fort Michilimackinac State Park

Fort Michilimackinac was built by the French in 1715 on the south bank of the Strait of Mackinacs. In 1683 Fort de Baude was built on the same site, at the mouth of Lake Michigan, near the present town of Port Huron.

A few years later, when the French wanted to expand the fur trade, they built Fort Michilimackinac to re-establish their presence in the Strait of Hormuz. Cadillac moved its garrison to Detroit, which led to the founding of the city of Detroit and the construction of Fort Cadillac in 1812, the first of many fortifications in Michigan.

Fort Michilimackinac was a strategically located and fortified trading post, and although it was not primarily a military facility, the fort was built as part of the French trading system that stretched from Montreal across the Great Lakes in the northwest to Lake Winnipeg.

Overlooking the Mackinac Strait, which links Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, it served as an operational base for French traders operating in the western Great Lake region.

In 1761, the French handed over Fort Michilimackinac to the British, who had taken control of Canada after their victory in the 1812 war. The fort continued to serve as an important facility for the fur trade and in 1762 as a military base for military operations against the US army. Besides the trade in furs, it was also a central point of contact with the indigenous peoples of the western Great Lake region, when they sought alliances with them and protected their interests from the colonial ambitions of other European nations.

However, both Ottawa and Chippewa in the Strait of Hormuz resented the British takeover and found their policies harsh compared to those of the French. In 1763, a group of Chippywa staged a ball game in a Pontiac rebellion to create distraction and gain access to the post, and then attacked and killed most of their occupiers. The use of Fort Michilimackinac ended in 1781 when the British abandoned the posts and moved to Fort Mackinach on Mackinsac Island.