“If only the walls could talk,” goes the saying. Well, inside the McGulpin House on Mackinac Island, they can!
What is perhaps the oldest house in all of Michigan has been restored in such a way that its walls reveal layers of use over the years. Visitors get a glimpse of what the typical working-class home would have looked like, from the late 1700s to the turn of the 20th century.
What is the McGulpin House on Mackinac Island?
The McGulpin House is one of several historical attractions on Mackinac Island managed by Mackinac State Historic Parks. It is an old house that would have looked like many others on Mackinac Island throughout the 1800s. Its first known occupants were the McGulpins, an average family for the time with nine children and a father who worked as a baker at the height of the island’s flourishing fur trade.
What makes the McGulpin House special is simply the fact that it survived. It is the best remaining example of the early French-Canadian architecture characteristic of the decades following construction of Fort Mackinac in 1780.
Recent dendroarchaeology has dated the wooden logs in the home to 1790, making the McGulpin House possibly the oldest surviving residence in Michigan.
Learn more about dendroarchaeology at the McGulpin House
Where to Find the McGulpin House of Mackinac Island
Although the original log structure of the McGulpin House was located behind the current site of Ste. Anne’s Church, it was moved in the late 1900s to its present site at the corner of Fort and Market streets.
The house, which has been restored to show what it was like when the McGulpins lived there around 1820, is typically open to visitors each year from June through late August. In addition to seeing slices of the home’s history in the paint and wallpaper, there also are exhibits on archaeology and on architecture and residential life on Mackinac Island in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Admission to the McGulpin House and other Mackinac State Historic Parks attractions are free with a same-day ticket to Fort Mackinac. Visitors also can buy a Historic Downtown Mackinac ticket and get into every Mackinac State Historic Parks attraction on the island except Fort Mackinac.
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