Autos Across Mackinac: Weekend Travelers Are Backed Up for Miles
Part 50: A Road to the Straits
By Les Bagley

Traffic in 1954 showed very little change from that carried in 1953, although many people came to see what was going on with construction on the new Mackinac Bridge. Here, the Vacationland approaches her slip on the north side of the State Dock, while the City of Cheboygan loads for another trip across to St. Ignace. (Michigan Department of Transportation)

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Mackinac Bridge in 2007, The St. Ignace News has been serializing Les Bagley's unpublished history of Michigan State Ferries, which carried vehicles and passengers across the Straits from 1923 to 1957. In 1954, roads to the bridge were being planned.

By July 1954, there had been no rain for more than three weeks. The daily bridge construction activity on the water was in plain sight of the ferry run, and while tourists flocked to see it, the ferry crewmen that summer slowly began to realize the bridge would actually be built this time, and with it, Michigan State Ferries would come to an end. Commissioner Charles Ziegler admitted as much in mid-July when he announced "various interests" had already spoken for use of the fleet, even before ferry service at the Straits ended.

The Vacationland had one of the most modern sewerage treatment plants afloat. These tanks were used to treat wastewater before it was pumped overboard. On the opposite end of the engine rooms, similar bottles held compressed air used for starting and restarting the Nordberg diesel engines. (Michigan Department of Transportation)

"The only thing we definitely know about the future of the ferries, is that they will not be operating across the Straits once the bridge is built," Ziegler said. "But beyond that is pure conjecture."

He noted the state was discussing other possible ferry routes, and that private interests had proposed new routes as well. Runs from Frankfort and Manistique, the Leelanau Peninsula and Manistique, South Haven to Chicago, and Chicago to Grand Haven had all been proposed. The Highway Department officially took no stand on any of them, but did hint it would be opposed to any use where the ferries went outside of Michigan.

In keeping with her 600-passenger capacity, the Vacationland had more restrooms than any other ship in the fleet. Large men's rooms and ladies' rooms were located just behind each of the large passenger lounges. They were well used, as most tourists took advantage of the convenient facilities during the break from driving. (Michigan Department of Transportation)

With their very livelihood at stake, ferry workers took hard looks at their profession, and some jumped ship. A few moved on to other Great Lakes shippers, but many eyed the fleet being assembled right on their doorstep. One of the first to make the move was Mate Bill Leigh, who resigned to take a job with Merritt-Chapman & Scott.

His departure came quietly, as did another separation. W. Steward Woodfill divorced his wife, Elizabeth, in Judge Ned Fenlon's courtroom. Woodfill quickly went back to running the Grand Hotel, where things were getting noisy. With bookings running well ahead for the 1954 season, everyone expected good things for the year. Reservations for the State Park were up 15%, and travel on the ferries was also up 6.6% for July, with the height of the tourist traffic still to come.

Visitors began to come in earnest the last weekend of July, with small lines backing up outside the toll booths in Mackinaw City as the huge dock filled to capacity. It got worse the first weekend of August. On Saturday, traffic backed up three miles as the ferries scrambled to accommodate northbound travelers. The lineup lasted all day from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Even on Sunday, small backups occurred, and the weekend was just the harbinger of the rest if the month.

As the month progressed, twohour waits became the norm on weekdays. Dockmen packed cars bumper to bumper in futile attempts to minimize on-road waiting. It was nearly as bad trying to go the other way. In the southbound crush, a driver, finally able to move toward the loading ferry, caught dockman Joseph Myron of Ishpeming. The vehicle first backed into him, and somehow hooked Myrons clothing, and he was dragged along the pavement, suffering bruises and lacerations before finally being freed and taken to the hospital at Sault Ste. Marie by ambulance.

Onboard the boats, cars were packed so tightly there was barely room to walk between them. Most drivers were directed to pull right up to the bumper ahead.

"All the way up! Bumper to bumper," became the common cry of deck hands. The crews' abilities to unload and load the boats quickly impressed more than a few motorists.

But on the Vacationland, and to a lesser extent on the other ferries, Captain Frank Nelson and his counterparts were not impressed. While the boats ran wild and their masters tried to hurry loading and unloading each time in the dock, sometimes their next departures were inexplicably delayed. Either a truck had to be backed off or a car had to be repositioned or some other imaginative reason kept the boats from timely departures on certain sailings. It was not coincidental that those sailings just happened to correspond with upcoming shift changes. Through clever subterfuge, the men made sure that each boat arrived at the appropriate dock just when their scheduled replacements were waiting. Apparently, Nelson never caught on to why sometimes his boat could move so many cars so quickly, but always seemed to lag behind when the crews were being relieved.

The Vacationland's captain also had a bad habit of calling for lifeboat drills just as his crews changed. While he still lived aboard, the men now all lived ashore and wanted to go directly home. Finally, after staying late several times, one shift had enough. As reported last June in Part 24, the next time Nelson called a drill while laying in Mackinaw City at relief time, they acted. They grudgingly lowered the lifeboat as they normally did. But instead of rowing around a little, then hoisting it back aboard as was the normal practice, this time, since their shifts were over, they rowed toward the shore.

"Where are those men going?" Nelson asked. The mate, watching the men through binoculars, reported, "It looks like they're heading toward the bar, sir." Nelson had to send the replacement crew into town to retrieve the lifeboat before the Vacationland could sail. He watched when he called lifeboat drills more closely after that experience.

Toward the end of August, the Arnold Line nearly had to retrieve a much larger vessel. The island motor ferry Chippewa had been left tied up at Dock 1 overnight on Saturday when youngsters playing on the dock loosed her mooring lines, nearly setting the ferry adrift. Her captain discovered the situation only because he came to work early on Sunday. With the help of some truckers, he was able to haul her back in and re-secure her lines.

Within a few days, police rounded up a "kid gang" of youth ages 9 to 13. While they may not have been responsible for the Chippewa incident, they were convicted of several counts of breaking and entering and property destruction elsewhere in the area.

Incredibly, despite the crush on the state docks, traffic counts for August appeared to be down by about 2.5% from the year before. Still, everyone looked forward to a brisk Labor Day weekend, including hoards of vendors, permitted back in the traffic lineups by Governor G. Mennen Williams, who interceded with the highway commissioner. But despite the Governor's action, Labor Day traffic was also down by nearly 8%.

Still, traffic was up almost 2% for the first eight months of 1954, and that prompted resort operators to call for a conference that fall to lobby the legislature for more road money and press Commissioner Ziegler for four-lane highways up and down the state, leading to the bridge. They cited an editorial in the Menominee Herald-Leader which said there was no point in building a bridge across the Straits if there was no good way to get to it. It added that the three years until the bridge opened was little time to develop a major road-building program. Meanwhile, the governor appeared at the Straits just after Labor Day to dedicate a new 19- bed hospital in St. Ignace and the D-Con Company of Chicago opened a campaign to exterminate rats near the St. Ignace dump. Tourists who came to watch black bears foraging there had remarked on the size and number of rats they'd seen. D-Con offered their services free, as a promotion of their product.

The governor returned to St. Ignace a few weeks later to stump for Democratic candidates at the Legion Hut, and in his speech he also called for better highways to the region.

"Our new straits bridge will present but another traffic bottleneck unless we have modern highways leading to and from the Straits, both north and south," the Governor noted. "We are going to get these better roads."

He explained that he'd ordered Commissioner Ziegler to comply with state law requiring a prospectus of road building in the next two years be delivered immediately to the governor's office.

Reporters noted: "An interesting angle to campaigning is the tendency of Gov. Williams to give Commissioner Ziegler a hard time. Requests for special reports by the chief administrative official keep the highway staff busy. Ziegler is in a delicate position regarding the governor's requests for information. Accumulating the facts takes people off other important duties; costs money that wouldn't need to be spent otherwise. In addition, the commissioner seems a little suspicious of the governor's motives. He appears to worry that Williams is applying pressure for reports because of political reasons, rather than an actual desire for knowledge."

"Answer to the latest such request was sent in a letter to the governor. The first paragraph read: "This will acknowledge your letter in which you request an enormous amount of detailed information and maps to supplement reports which I have previously made." Other sentences described the busy activity in the department and noted the report would be ready for the 1955 legislature.

Ziegler actually had no quarrel with the idea of building four-lane roads to the Straits. He just had no idea how his department was going to design and pay for them without disrupting the long-range plans for other projects developed by his department, many dating from the war years. The main problem was that communities all up and down Michigan saw the four lanes coming and they wanted them to come through all their communities. Suggested routes included US-131 through Grand Rapids and Cadillac, US-27 through Lansing, Mt. Pleasant, and straight north, and US-23 through Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, and Saginaw.

Ziegler noted that there were many more pressing needs for roads in the areas that supplied the major tax funding for them. As far as a four-lane road to the Straits, his attitude had to be, "wait and see."

That fall, school districts around the Straits noted a huge jump in enrollment from bridge workers' children. Some districts were up as much as 30%, creating problems with crowded classrooms and inadequate facilities for all the newcomers.

The annual decline in fall ferry traffic allowed the Vacationland crew to get ready for the coming rush of hunting season. With a breather, they sailed the big ferry to a shipyard in Ashtabula, Ohio, for a "checkup" and routine maintenance. The Ohio yard was chosen because other, closer facilities were all busy with other work at the time the Vacationland could be spared.

The trip down Lake Huron and across Lake Erie was uneventful but involved tricky navigation up a narrow river channel to reach the Ashtabula shipyard. With her 75- foot beam, Vacationland had little room to spare. She returned to the Straits September 30, just in time to help with the hunting rush for bird season. She joined the Cheboygan and Munising to provide hourly service across the Straits. The City of Petoskey laid in the dock for maintenance, while The Straits of Mackinac stood by in case she was needed on the weekend.

It turns out that she wasn't. September traffic was again down from the year before, by about 2%. The traffic was more along political lines as the legislature proposed a $500 million bond issue to build roads to the bridge. Governor Williams proposed appointing a 50-member commission to study where they should go, saying Commissioner Ziegler would have to bow to political pressure, and as local lawmakers and civic leaders lined up to promote four lanes through their communities, they formed a ready-made campaign organization for the bond issue. Each hoped the road would go through their towns.

But Commissioner Ziegler was unmoved. He noted the political groups had been misled, adding, "Superhighways don't go through towns of any size." Still, in mid- October, he submitted detailed plans to Governor Williams' office, outlining almost $150 million in proposed highway construction for the next two years, including a huge program in the vicinity of the bridge. The first four-lane sections would be built in 1956 and would run from Alanson to Mackinaw City on the south side, and for eight miles toward the Soo, north from St. Ignace.

This prompted St. Ignace leaders to worry that a bypass might take away even more business once the bridge opened. Instead, they suggested a four-lane highway "jumping" Moran Bay to ease traffic congestion but keep visitors coming to the downtown business district. The plan involved building a new railroad ferry dock and removing the tracks from downtown. The "jump" would even provide a badly needed breakwater for a projected harbor. That plan went no further than the talking stage.

For the first time in several months, October ferry traffic actually gained over the year before, but the increase was only 1.1%. For the year, the increase barely held on, as the Highway Department said 1954 volume was running 1.1% ahead of 1953.

Deer hunting got underway in mid-November and caught everyone off guard. While 60,000 nimrods were projected, nobody expected them to all arrive in Mackinaw City at nearly the same time. The crush began on Friday, November 12, and through Saturday, the longest traffic backup in State Ferry history snaked its way bumper-to-bumper nearly 20 miles back from the dock on Route 23, tying up local traffic in downtown Cheboygan. Cars stretched 9 miles to Carp Lake on US-31. Hunters waited up to 18 hours to catch a boat, some sleeping in their cars to hold their places in the huge line. One man suffered a heart attack while waiting. Others played cards, read books, or listened to the new Cheboygan radio station, which had signed on during the summer.

By the time the northbound rush subsided Sunday evening, 71,000 hunters had crossed the Straits, but counts showed they came in only 29 more cars than had been transported the year before, or about a tenth of a percent growth.

The next weekend, southbound traffic peaked with autos lined up 6 miles from the St. Ignace dock. While traffic continued heavy after Sunday evening, no more major backups occurred. All in all, November also showed a slight decrease in traffic from 1953, but only about 6/10ths of a percent. Commissioner Ziegler still proclaimed 1954 a banner year with 1% traffic growth over the first 11 months.

Calendars turned to December, and the two smallest ferries turned to winter lay-up in downtown St. Ignace, with their crews idled at mid-month. The Petoskey and Munising held the hourly schedule, and the Vacationland filled in as needed. For the most part, the icebreakers crew spent their time readying their ship for full time winter service, expected to begin January 1.

Across America, women marveled at a new-fangled creation, the Playtex Living Bra, and politicians remarked at the political prowess of Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams, who had been elected to an unprecedented fourth term the month before. Williams used the win to take another swipe at Commissioner Ziegler, one of only two Republicans remaining in state elective office. But Williams' vendetta ran into a stone wall, in the form of an unexpected law.

Williams berated Ziegler for not taking bids for contracts on two small road projects. Since the projects were already underway, he didn't pursue the matter, but he let Ziegler know, in no uncertain terms, that it must never happen again. But Ziegler had an ally. Attorney General Frank G. Millard was one of the Republicans swept out of office that November, but he realized something Soapy had overlooked: "There's nothing to require that the highway commissioner ask for bids!" he said.

Newspapers noted that was just one round, and that round's winner was Ziegler. But there would be many more rounds before one of the two adversaries finally left office.

As winter weather threatened to envelope the Straits of Mackinac, bridge contractors scrambled to wrap up their season with a series of record concrete pours, trying to finish the major foundation work upon which the Mackinac Straits Bridge would rest, before ice held their flotilla in port. More than 400 men remained through the holidays, with many of them wintering in the region. Across the state, Michiganders marveled at artists renditions of the "gaudy" green and white paint scheme chosen for the bridge's superstructure which would soon to rise above the water.

Winter came along just in time for Christmas and then broke into a mild spell, with sunshine on Christmas Day. In the spirit of the holiday, crewmembers and travelers alike enjoyed Capt. Nelson's beautiful Christmas tree aboard the Vacationland.

After the holiday, rain came, turning to snow, as the mercury fell into the 20s, coating everything with a bright dusting of white. With the cold, ore boats tied up for the winter after an unusually short season, and the Vacationland took over the ferry run for the cold season ahead. Leaving Mackinaw City daily at odd hours beginning at 5 a.m., she left St. Ignace on the even hours, with the last departure at midnight.

In his report of 1954 traffic, Commissioner Ziegler noted December volume had increased by only about 1%, the same as the increase for the whole year. In 1954, just more than 871,400 vehicles had been transported.

Next week: A Ferry to Somewhere Else…Maybe!

Copyright 2007 by Les Bagley. All rights reserved.

If you have ferry stories, related photographs, or information you'd like to share, please contact the author, Les Bagley, via e-mail at les@divco.org, or through the newspaper office.