page_title: Straits of Mackinac
section_title: Today
hierarchical_section_title: Straits of Mackinac / Today
caption_attribution_description: English: Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse, Mackinaw City, Michigan
context_page_description: The Straits of Mackinac are narrow waterways in the U.S. state of Michigan between Michigan's Lower and Upper Peninsulas. The main strait flows under the Mackinac Bridge and connects two of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The main strait is 3 ¹⁄₂ miles wide and has a maximum depth of 295 feet. Hydrologically, the two connected lakes can be considered one lake, which is called Lake Michigan–Huron. Historically, the native Odawa people called the region around the Straits Michilimackinac. The Straits of Mackinac are "whipsawed by currents unlike anywhere else in the Great Lakes".
  Islands forming the edge of Straits of Mackinac include the two populated islands, Bois Blanc and Mackinac, and one that is uninhabited: Round island. The Straits of Mackinac are major shipping lanes, providing passage for raw materials and finished goods and connecting, for instance, the iron mines of Minnesota to the steel mills of Gary, Indiana. Before the railroads reached Chicago from the east, most immigrants arrived in the Midwest and Great Plains by ships on the Great Lakes. The straits are five miles wide at their narrowest point, where they are spanned by the Mackinac Bridge.
context_section_description: The straits are patrolled by a detachment of the United States Coast Guard based at Graham Point, St. Ignace. A shipping channel through the winter ice is maintained by the Coast Guard's Great Lakes icebreaker, USCGC Mackinaw, based in Cheboygan near the eastern edge of the Straits. This vessel went into service during the 2005/06 ice season.
  Two ferry companies operate out of Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, connecting tourists and commuters to Mackinac Island: Shepler's Ferry and the Star Line Ferry.
  Most of the Straits have been set aside by the state of Michigan as the Straits of Mackinac Shipwreck Preserve, a riparian public space dedicated to those personnel who were lost aboard the boats and ships that sank in these dangerous shipping lanes.
  Lighthouses in the Straits of Mackinac include:
  The McGulpin Point Light, on McGulpin Point, three miles (5 km) west of Fort Michilimackinac.
  The Old Mackinac Point Light, in Mackinaw City, which is open to the public.
  The Round Island Light on Round Island, which is not open to the public but which can be viewed from the Mackinac Island ferry channel.
caption: Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse
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