U.S. Senator Francis B. Stockbridge bought this site on Mackinac Island in 1882 and pulled together three competing transportation companies, the Michigan Central Railroad, the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, and the Detroit and Cleveland Steamship Navigation Company, into the Mackinac Island Hotel Company, each with a stake in drawing more travelers to the island. Builder John Oliver Plank, one of the era’s most prolific hotel contractors, raised the building in a remarkable 93 days, and it opened July 10, 1887, styled after Detroit architects Mason and Rice’s design, with rooms going for three to five dollars a night.
Its 660-foot covered porch, the longest in the world, quickly became the island’s central meeting spot, nicknamed Flirtation Walk by young romantics, and Thomas Edison reportedly demonstrated his new phonograph there for curious guests. W. Stewart Woodfill started as a desk clerk in 1919 and bought the hotel outright during the Depression in 1933, beginning a family ownership that has now spanned three generations. Mackinac Island has banned motor vehicles since the 1890s, so horse-drawn carriages still meet guests arriving by ferry.