Heritage Village at Mackinaw

Our village now includes:

• An 1880's one-room school from the community of Freedom, a few miles east of Mackinaw City
• The Mackinaw City pest (pestilence) house from the same era as the school house
•The sawmill that cut the logs for the locks at Sault Ste. Marie right after the turn of the century
• A tarpaper work shack
• A vintage base ball field (yes, it was two words back then)
• An artifacts building
• A community garden
• A community pavilion
• Modern outhouses

An 1897 church from Brutus, a machine shed, a replication of a prominent family's farm, the Stimpson Homestead, are on site and slated for completion in the near future. Educational programs are in place or are being developed to bring each to life.

Our most treasured objective is to educate children through exciting interpretation, participation, and enthusiastic retelling of the history of that time. In a typical year hundreds of school children visit Heritage Village. We invite teachers to bring their students to our Village to "really see what Great Grandma Smith meant about no lights, no cars, no planes, no telephones when she was a girl." High school and college students, home for the summer, fall in love with base ball using 1870's rules when gentlemanliness was the standard and an umpire could simply ask, "Were you safe or out?" and a "ballist' (player) would respond honestly, much to the delight of the "cranks" (fans).