The Anishinaabe called it Wigobiminiss - 'tying bark island' - for the basswood trees whose white inner bark they stripped to sew birchbark canoes and weave snowshoe webbing. French voyageurs translated the name directly: Bois Blanc, white wood. English-speaking settlers mangled the pronunciation into 'Boblo,' and the name stuck. Twelve miles long and six miles wide, this forested island sits in Lake Huron just southeast of its famous neighbor Mackinac Island, yet the two could not be more different. Where Mackinac draws millions of tourists to its fudge shops and Grand Hotel, Bois Blanc remains what Mackinac once was: wild, quiet, and largely empty. No paved roads cross the island. Towering white and Norway pines cover state-owned forest land. The roughly 60 year-round residents know every boat on the water and every set of tire tracks in the sand.
Human presence on Bois Blanc reaches back thousands of years. The Juntunen archaeological site, on the island's northern shore, has yielded one of the most important prehistoric records in the upper Great Lakes. Excavators recorded 25 stratigraphic layers representing six distinct occupations and three cultural phases, with gaps suggesting the island was periodically abandoned for extended periods. The artifacts recovered - bone harpoons, stone points, awls - tell of people who fished the surrounding waters and hunted the island's forests across millennia. The Anishinaabe (Chippewa) were the island's people when Europeans arrived. In 1795, the Treaty of Greenville ceded Bois Blanc to the United States federal government. The treaty's language is remarkable: the island was described as 'an extra and voluntary gift of the Chippewa nation,' a phrase that carries a weight the treaty-makers may not have fully appreciated.
Bois Blanc's remoteness made it a natural refuge - and a staging ground. During the War of 1812, U.S. Navy Captain Arthur Sinclair's fleet sheltered at the island while preparing to attack the British garrison at Fort Mackinac just a few miles northwest. The island's harbors offered protection and concealment that the open straits could not. Decades later, the island played host to a stranger drama. In 1880, an alleged murderer named Henry English escaped from Pennsylvania authorities and fled to Bois Blanc, hiding among the island's sparse population. Pinkerton agents tracked him across the Great Lakes and apprehended him on the island. English was returned to Pennsylvania, where a jury acquitted him. The United States Life Saving Service established a station at Walker's Point in 1890, reflecting the treacherous waters surrounding the island - the Straits of Mackinac were a graveyard for ships navigating between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
For much of the 19th century, Bois Blanc was a working island. Its forests were cut for firewood and lumber, much of it shipped to Mackinac Island, where woodcutting was prohibited. Lime kilns burned island limestone into the quick lime essential for mortar and plaster. But as the frontier era faded, a new economy emerged. The Pointe Aux Pins Association formed in the 1880s, and in 1908 President Walter B. Webb hired a Detroit surveying firm to plat the Pointe Aux Pins subdivision - the island's first resort community. Summer cottages rose among the pines. As recently as the 1950s, Bois Blanc was still supplying lumber to Mackinac, but the island's identity was shifting from extraction to retreat. The forest grew back, the kilns went cold, and the summer people became the island's primary inhabitants.
Bois Blanc Island operated without electricity until 1964. That year, the Presque Isle Electric and Gas Co-Op completed a 3.7-mile underwater cable from Point Nipigon on the mainland. At the time, approximately 200 structures stood on the island - cottages, cabins, a few year-round homes - all of which had managed with kerosene lamps, wood stoves, and generators. The original submarine cable served for 35 years before being replaced in 1999 by two modern cables spanning the Straits of Mackinac. Even today, infrastructure remains minimal. There are no paved roads. A maintained county road runs from the northeast corner to the western tip, and Fire Tower Road bisects the interior, providing access to Twin Lakes and Lake Thompson. Beyond that, unpaved tracks and trails wind through the forest.
Reaching Bois Blanc requires intention. Plaunt Transportation operates the sole ferry service, running daily from Cheboygan when the straits are not frozen. The Kristen D can carry 16 vehicles - a number that reflects the island's scale. There is also Bois Blanc Island Airport, a paved strip with the identifier 6Y1, sitting at 664 feet elevation. During harsh winters, when ice locks the straits, an ice road is sometimes marked with cut evergreen trees, allowing vehicles to cross from Pries Landing on the mainland to Sand Bay on the island. The evergreens serve as lane markers across the white expanse - a navigation system as old as the frontier itself. This is an island that asks you to work for the privilege of visiting, and rewards you with silence, dark skies, and the sense of having left the modern world behind.
Located at 45.78°N, 84.48°W in Lake Huron, southeast of Mackinac Island. Bois Blanc is approximately 12 miles long and 6 miles wide, heavily forested with visible lakes in the interior (Twin Lakes, Lake Thompson). Bois Blanc Island Airport (6Y1) has a paved runway at 664 feet elevation on the island. The Mackinac Bridge is visible to the northwest. Nearest mainland town is Cheboygan, almost due south. From 3,000-4,000 feet, the contrast between Bois Blanc's wild, forested character and Mackinac Island's developed shoreline is striking. The ferry route from Cheboygan to Pointe Aux Pins is visible as a line across the water.