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Mackinaw Bridge Museum, Mackinaw City, MI

Photo: starscream1211, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.

Museums

Mackinaw Bridge Museum

A free museum above a Mackinaw City pizza restaurant, filled with donated items from the Mackinac Bridge's construction.

231 East Central Avenue, Mackinaw City, Michigan 49701 · Mackinaw City, MI

About Mackinaw Bridge Museum

The museum sits upstairs from a restaurant in Mackinaw City and has been open for decades. Its founder, J. C. Stilwell, worked as an ironworker on the Mackinac Bridge and began the collection with a spinning wheel used to build the bridge cables and a film about the bridge's construction. Former ironworkers and families donated diving gear, documents, photographs, and tools used on the project. A 2005 fire destroyed the restaurant and the original museum, but both were rebuilt and reopened, with the museum returning in 2007 and once again filled with donated bridge artifacts.

  • #mackinac bridge
  • #construction history
  • #ironworkers
  • #free admission
  • #local history

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