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07/01/2007Big Mac at 50
Span opened up commerce in U.P.Most Yoopers say bridge has been a boon
Tom Gustafson's gas station and general store is a stop-off point in Brevort along U.S. 2 around 20 miles west of the Mackinac Bridge. BREVORT — Tom Gustafson used to sit with boyhood friends at his uncle's gas station and guess how many customers would pull in from ferry traffic that crossed the nearby Straits of Mackinac. "We'd bet how many cars Brevort would get of the string of cars coming through,” said Gustafson, recalling the brief flurries of activity that would follow hours of silence in the years before the Mackinac Bridge opened in late 1957. Folks who've carved out a living north of the Straits said the bridge opening 50 years ago altered the face of regional business and commerce, changes that continue to this day. When it opened, the five-mile bridge ended the stranglehold St. Ignace and Mackinaw City had on hunters and travelers — and their dollars — as they waited for ferries to cross the lake. The Mighty Mac became the catalyst for small, family businesses that sprouted and spread in Upper Peninsula communities such as Epoufette, Hessel and Brevort in the 1960s and '70s. But business activity has ebbed in recent years, just as it flowed decades before. Many outlying businesses that emerged after the bridge opened have since closed, and much of the current growth is in St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, the two cities on either side of the span. "Mackinaw City has become a lot more commercialized,” said Keith Massaway, owner of the Zodiac party store in St. Ignace, a venture his father started more than 20 years ago. "Across the bridge, we go for the more natural, quiet lifestyle.” Massaway, a former president and a board member for the Michilimackinac Historical Society, said cars used to line up in St. Ignace along U.S. 2 north of the bridge and wait for car ferries. Vendors walked along the road and hawked smoked fish and other local goods as vehicles waited. Delays could stretch from hours to days, depending on weather and ice conditions in the Straits. "There were always a lot of stay-overs because of the long lines to get on the ferries,” Massaway said. But the bridge transformed St. Ignace from a vehicular waiting room to a gateway to the U.P. and Canada. "It allowed so many more people to access the Upper Peninsula,” Massaway said. Brevort is a small town of Scandinavian heritage on the northern tip of Lake Michigan along U.S. 2, a shade over 20 miles west of the bridge. It was named for 19th century surveyor Henry Brevoort Jr., and once was nicknamed "the Warehouse” because in the 1870s the Mackinaw Lumber Co. stored a large depot of supplies there. After the lumber business waned, the town became a commercial fishing haven, which continued until the middle of the 20th century. Many of the town's old-timers have ties to commercial fishing days, including Gustafson, whose father was a fisherman. "He loved it,” Gustafson said. "He wouldn't have done anything else.” Fishing began to fade by the 1950s, and the younger generation needed to find work. Some like Gustafson moved on; he left to work in the retail food business on the East Coast for several years before he returned in 1978. Others like Dave Molvason stayed behind, and took on a variety of jobs to carve out a living. He toiled as a bus driver and remembers hauling school kids across the bridge when it opened. He also tried school maintenance, owned some small businesses that included the general store now owned by Gustafson and drove the local wrecker. The bridge opening transformed Brevort from sleepy fishing village to land of opportunity. "The traffic flowed,” Molavson said. "People were able to expand their businesses.” The bridge created a surge of commerce and businesses popped up along U.S. 2 west of the Mighty Mac. Locals said there were no less than a dozen service stations between Brevort and the bridge, a handful of mom-and-pop motels, pasty shops and more. "During the late '70s, everything was booming out here,” Gustafson said. "We're kind of late bloomers up here, but the bridge has opened it up.” But much of the tourist trade eventually gravitated back toward St. Ignace, where well-known chain motels and national eateries took root. Today, to the west, a few businesses spot the highway, but several are lifeless shells, deserted in recent years as the highway evolved into a thoroughfare for travelers heading to the far reaches of the U.P. and beyond. "Between here and St. Ignace, it amazes me how many businesses have went under,” Gustafson said. He suspects it's partly because of a change in tourists' travel patterns; they tend to favor familiar lodging in larger towns instead of the out-of-the-way places the U.P. has to offer. "The generations now that are traveling, they're looking for the Holiday Inn and fast food,” Gustafson said. "Not too many people travel now without knowing where they're going to stay.” But the bridge also created more mobility for locals, just as it did for travelers. Molavson and his wife, Lois, cross the bridge regularly to shop in Cheboygan, visit their doctors in Petoskey or catch a movie in Mackinaw City. "It's made a lot of difference,” Molavson said. "It's a lot better.” The area around the Les Cheneaux Islands in Lake Huron east of the Straits has been a summer getaway for Carol Romanuk since the early 1950s. She remembers traveling north from Dearborn and crossing on the car ferry, and later observing as workers shaped a bridge that seemed to rise from the water. "It was exciting looking at it, and watching it going up like that,” Romanuk said. The area east of the Straits didn't experience a dramatic change when the bridge opened, Romanuk said. Development that followed centered more in Mackinaw City and St. Ignace than eastward, she said. "I've seen growth here, but it's been spread over 40, 50 years,” she said. "Most of the people have gone west.” Romanuk went east, and made the Cedarville area her full-time home 16 years ago. She and her son, James, bought the Hessel Bay Inn on Lake Huron 10 years ago. Some days, the restaurant overflows with customers when severe weather closes the bridge, but most business comes from year-round locals or people who've summered there for generations. And that's just the way they like it. "It's a place to get away from the city,” James Romanuk said. Some are convinced the Mackinac Bridge will continue to be a conduit for change in its next 50 years. Massaway, a tribal council member with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, predicts the area north of the bridge will continue to experience growth and development much like Traverse City and Petoskey to the south. "Sooner or later, the growth is all moving north,” he said. "Eventually, it will all get up here as well.” [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
