Pre-Photograph History of St. Ignace Told Thursday

Early European exploration and settlement of St. Ignace and the Straits area will be the focus of an illustrated talk by Brian Leigh Dunnigan at the St. Ignace Public Library Thursday, August 11, at 7 p.m. The public presentation is sponsored by the Michilimackinac Historical Society and is free.

Mr. Dunnigan will share interesting discoveries about St. Ignace and the Straits region made while researching a new book on Mackinac before photographs. The audience will explore early maps, drawings, and paintings, beginning with a 1670’s Jesuit map Lake Superior and the Straits of Mackinac drawn. A better map was not produced until the 1820’s, Mr. Dunnigan says.

Other maps and drawings show early development in St. Ignace.

Historian Dunnigan is a graduate of the University of Michigan and is Curator of Maps at William L. Clements Library there. He is the former executive director of Old Fort Niagara in New York and is the author of numerous articles and books, including the acclaimed “Frontier Metropolis, Picturing Early Detroit, 1701-1838,” published for the Detroit tricentennial. He is a summer resident of Mackinac Island, where he grew up, and has written a number of early accounts for the Mackinac Island State Park Commission.