10-28-04 @ 9:04 am EDT

AKA, probably the most depressing and infuriating entry I have posted in here in quite some time!

I hope she doesn't mind me quoting her e-mail...I recently received one regarding my Mackinac Island site, from a woman who visits there three or four times a year (I could only dream) and collects antique postcards of it. She offered me information on the Fairy Arch and "Pulpit Rock" (apparently there is more than one formation there going by that name); I didn't think she would have much to tell me aside from what I already knew (that the arch was not far north of Robinson's Folly (I found it on a map from 1941), and that it no longer existed), but said that yes, I would like to know anyway.

This is the information she gave me.

Regarding Fairy Arch - It was VERY near Arch Rock.....I have several old postcards of it....It was just beautiful.....Also, it was very near another rock formation called "Giant's Stairway" - Neither one of these formations is there anymore.....They were blown up in the mid 40's when the island needed rock to place around the roadway (to ward off continued erosion around the shore).....
It was during the war, and money was tight, and the islanders needed rock to place around the shoreline, and so they just blew up what they had......In fact, I KNOW somebody that was on the crew that helped blow those formations up!.....It's ALL so sad, because future generations will never be able to see the natural beauty of what one was....In David Armour's book, "100 Years at Mackinac", he makes a brief mention of Fairy Arch on page 68.....Scott's cave was also blown up around the same time (and for the same reason).....


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They...blew...it...UP?!!

THEY BLEW IT UP?!!!

THEY BLEW IT ALL UP?!!!!

What sort of park BLOWS UP ITS LANDMARKS?! To SAVE A FRIGGING ROAD?!!

>_<;;;;;

I cannot even begin to express my...this...UGGHH!! If they had just simply collapsed...I could accept that! But for a state park--the country's SECOND NATIONAL PARK--to BLOW UP ITS OWN LANDMARKS TO MAKE GRAVEL...like that damned road couldn't have waited until the frigging war was over?! What the HELL made it so imperative that they fix the road DURING WARTIME?!

>_<;;;;;

This means that it's likely I will not even be able to find so much as the crumbled remains of the thing when I next visit the east shore...unless I want to start picking up GRAVEL! That GRAVEL along the road...THAT is what is left of the Fairy Arch? And Scott's Cave? AND the Giant's Stairway?? THEY TURNED THEM ALL INTO GRAVEL!

UN-FRIGGING-BELIEVABLE!!

HOW did they come to such a remarkably...utterly...STUPID decision?? Who was it who decided what landmark was to stay and which was to go? Why the Fairy Arch, and not Arch Rock? Why the Giant's Stairway, and not Sugar Loaf? Why Scott's Cave, and not Cave of the Woods? For that matter, blowing up the entire Giant's Stairway and the Fairy Arch...did they not consider...such an action might have endangered Arch Rock and Robinson's Folly themselves?? They're practically NEXT DOOR to each other! They put a "Keep Off" sign on Arch Rock and Devil's Kitchen but then they go and blow up the Fairy Arch to make GRAVEL?!

I just...I cannot believe it. WHATsoever. If the military had moved in and made them blow it up, okay. But the Park Service...blowing up its own thousands-of-years-old natural formations...to keep a road from eroding! I just...I do not even have the WORDS to express how royally this pisses me off. >_<;;;;; No wonder I was never able to find information from park-related sites themselves! Like they would WANT to admit they did such a...tremendously stupidly utterly IDIOTIC thing--to their OWN PARK!

I cannot believe how they violated that place. That's exactly what this was! A violation! Why didn't they just blow up the frigging West Bluff while they were at it? Nothing there but some stupid Victorian cottages! Who'd miss them? I know I wouldn't! Throw in the damned Grand Hotel while they're at it! And why didn't they just blow up the fort, too? I mean, it's not nearly as old as the Fairy Arch and Giant's Stairway and Scott's Cave were...why not wave goodbye to it? I found it hard enough to believe that rather than rebuild Fort Holmes, they demolished it in the Sixties...but THIS--! At least...Fort Holmes was a REPLICA!!

Fairy Arch and Giant's Stairway and Scott's Cave were the real things!

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD!

I'm glad to at least know of the fate of these sites...but I just figured they had collapsed on their own...I never, ever, in a million years would have imagined that it was Mackinac Island State Park itself which destroyed them!

I am just far too pissed off by this. >_<;;;;; I must go and sit and...STEAM...for God knows how long. UGH!

Blown UP!