Mackinaw City ( MAK-ə-naw) is a village at the northernmost narrowing of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Divided surrounded by Cheboygan and Emmet counties, Mackinaw City is the located at the southern fade away of the Mackinac Bridge, which carries Interstate 75 higher than the Straits of Mackinac to the Upper Peninsula. Mackinaw City, along later St. Ignace, serves as an access tapering off to Mackinac Island. For these reasons, Mackinaw City is considered one of Michigan’s most popular tourist attractions.

The Mackinaw City Place is house to a number of historic sites, including Fort Michilimackinac, Historic Mill Creek State Park, Old Mackinac Point Light, McGulpin Point Light, and the retired US Coast Guard Icebreaker Mackinaw.

The reveal of Mackinaw is a respelling of “Mackinac”, a strait surrounded by Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, an island in the strait, and an important trading-post upon the island; ultimately from Ojibwe mishinii-makinaang (“at the place of many snapping turtles”).

The predominant historic tribes in this area were three Algonquian peoples, known collectively as the Council of Three Fires: Ojibwe (Chippewa), Ottawa (Odawa), and Potawatomi at the grow old of French open in the 17th century. These peoples had long frequented the surrounding region, which they called Michilimackinac, to fish, hunt, trade, and worship. Mackinac Island in the straits appeared to have the influence of a turtle. The Native Americans here had a establishment myth based upon the sacred turtle. The Straits of Mackinac was the center of two routes valuable to the fur trade: one to Montreal in the east, by way of Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa River valley; and the further to Detroit in the south via Lakes Huron and St. Clair.