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Without the revenue bond program and the many men and women who were instrumental in championing the cause of historic preservation, the world of Mackinac as we know it wouldn’t exist. Picture Fort Mackinac before 1958, the year that saw the beginnings of quick change. The poor condition of the fort was described by Eugene T. Petersen in Inside Mackinac:  “When I looked more closely, I realized how much modern use and neglect had changed things from military days: asphalt shingles, flaking paint, boarded-up fireplaces, plywood partitions…overhead wiring, cracked windows …and sagging linoleum-covered floors indicating rotten joists…”

 

The idea of historic restoration at Mackinac began during a November 1955 meeting involving Mackinac Island State Park commissioners and key leaders of the Michigan historic preservation community. Michigan Governor G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams, who summered on Mackinac Island and had a love for its rich history, spearheaded the effort by calling the meeting and planting the seed for an active restoration program at Mackinac in the minds of the commissioners. During the meeting, participants discussed the crumbling Clerks’ Quarters on Market Street and restoration of Fort Michilimackinac and sites in St. Ignace.

 

Although the group agreed to meet again, it never did. But the idea had been planted, and during the summer of 1957 the Michigan Historical Commission met on Mackinac Island at Williams’ request to discuss historical restoration. On that same date, Williams paid a middle-of-the-night visit to Republican W. Stewart Woodfill, owner and operator of the Grand Hotel. A native of Indiana, Woodfill first came to Mackinac Island 30 years earlier to escape hay fever. A graduate of Bowdoin College, he worked as a desk clerk at the Grand Hotel, invested his money in it and became a partner, sold it just before the 1920s stock market crash, and then bought it back in 1933 from its distressed owners. 

 

Williams’ agenda was to appoint Woodfill to the seven-member Mackinac Island State Park Commission (MISPC) in order to promote historic restoration. It hadn’t been an appointment Woodfill sought. As written by Peterson in Inside Mackinac, “Successful businessmen on Mackinac Island made decisions and spent money quickly because the season is short. In government, however, the budget process at best takes two years....”

 

Despite this, Woodfill accepted the challenge, but with conditions.  He would become chairman of the commission, and he would be fully supported by the governor. On August 12, 1957, Woodfill was unanimously elected as chairman of the commission. Williams’ word had been gold. Financing was now Woodfill’s biggest challenge, and he turned to revenue bonds.

“Woodfill…knew that several hundred thousand visitors come to Mackinac each year…” wrote David A. Armour in 100 Years At Mackinac. “If the fort were cleaned up and filled with interesting exhibits and displays, Woodfill reasoned, people would be willing to pay a modest fee to visit there….”

 

In late 1957, Woodfill went back to the legislature with a bill written by his own attorney, and it was introduced as Bill 201. By early 1958, Williams signed the bill into law. The revenue bond program for Mackinac State Historic Parks was born.   The commission voted an initial bond issue of $125,000, but Woodfill sought a more modest beginning, and arranged for the sale of only $50,000.

 

True to his nature, Woodfill was a businessman. He realized that, with the opening of Fort Mackinac set for June, the money from the bonds wouldn’t be available in time. Woodfill decided to loan the needed money out of his own pocket. He wrote in a letter to the Commission, dated April 28, 1958, “Any funds that I may advance or loan to the Commission…which for any reason can not be repaid to me…is to be considered by me…as a gift or donation to your Commission.”

Woodfill believed the program would succeed, and he was right. The revenue collected during that first summer, with tickets to Fort Mackinac priced at 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children, generated $54,119 in revenue, exceeding the amount issued in bonds.

 

In the words of Woodfill as quoted in Mackinac In Restoration by Eugene T. Petersen, “We have found an oil well which can pump funds into historical development at Mackinac indefinitely.”