11-13-04 @ 10:23 am EST

I finally got a book I won on eBay back in mid-October. It's a skinny little book called Pre-Historic Mackinac Island and it's from the 1940s. An ex-library book, just 74 pages, cloth-bound cover. I've never seen anything like it before or since on eBay, or anywhere else, and I make it a point lately to do a search every day on the words "mackinac" and "mackinaw" just to see if they get anything interesting. (Lots of postcards, mainly. And jackets. Mackinaws. Get it?) I figured, a book about prehistoric Mackinac MUST have something about the natural formations, because they certainly wouldn't have much to say about history, would they? On the other hand, the size of the book was so small...74 pages...and it's this very dull, plain greenish-grayish-khaki cover with plain old boring black type on the front, PRE-HISTORIC MACKINAC ISLAND. I grumbled to myself a lot that it would be nothing more than lake level diagrams and crap.

At least I was the only one who bid on it. What other dork would be interested in such a thing? o_o

Well, I waited and waited and it FINALLY came yesterday...I had been ready to e-mail the seller asking after it...I almost missed it because the mail goes by at weird times and I checked too early, so I actually got the book after waking up later in the afternoon. I tore the package open and pulled out this dinky little book and started to look through it. And...YEE! Almost immediately I saw a black-and-white photo of SCOTT'S CAVE! :D That's the FIRST photo I've ever seen of that formation! Simply seeing that told me this book was worth the money.

I got to look at it more while Ma and I waited at Pizza Hut. This book is fantastic! Since it was written in the Forties, apparently Scott's Cave was still in existence and had not been blown up yet. The Fairy Arch is not mentioned anywhere that I can see, though it is listed on a map included in the back of the book. (A TOPOGRAPHICAL map! With all the LAND FEATURES! *dies in bliss* The auction listing didn't even MENTION a map!) Some of the trail names have changed over the years--Tranquil Bluff Trail is called at times, Bluff View Trail or something like that. And Cadotte Avenue is called "Indian Trail" or something. (Too busy typing to bother looking, duh.) The map also includes the location of OTHER cracks in the island (they are ALL OVER the place!), limestone sinkholes, and springs. *yee yee yee yee* AND I found out the name of that little bitty arch near the base of Arch Rock! Yes, it IS a real arch--I had always thought it just LOOKED like one. (I have a pic of it on my Powow site, though I'm too busy typing to link you to the exact page...duh! I think it's on the 2002 tour if you care to go looking. Link should be somewhere on my journal.) But over the past few months I've kept coming across stuff that led me to slowly change my mind--the Mackinac State Park site looking for a stereogram of "Maiden Arch (below Arch Rock)" or something like that, and ANOTHER person's photos of Arch Rock, in which he shot this arch and said, "Here's the other arch, the one everybody forgets."

According to the book, this arch is in fact called the Sanilac Arch. Apparently named after some Huron chief or something (at least that was the only "Sanilac" I came across in my search which wasn't a place name). Oh yeah, I think "Sanilac" might also refer to a geological time period (not sure), so that's probably more likely how it got its name. But that's where "Sanilac" came from. Damn that word is hard to type! It keeps coming out Salniac! (And I actually had to go back and correct all those, because I had been typing "Salinac"! Whatever.)

There is ONE thing in this book, though, that has left me baffled all over again. At first I thought it was a typo--the author refers to "Chimney Rock" in one part, then just after that, makes reference to "Sunset Rock." These are both the same formation--so I laughed and said, "He couldn't make up his mind." But then I looked at the map and...it lists BOTH Chimney Rock, AND Sunset Rock, as separate land formations along the west shore. O_o ??? Wha...? How is that even possible? EVERY map I have found either of these on has shown just one. It's always been referred to by either name, but there have never been two formations. Even on a park website I came across the information that Chimney Rock was also known as "Sunset Rock," and other accounts have verified this. I've never seen TWO formations referred to in any other texts, not even the antique ones I've found online. There was ONE small thing which would back up the idea of two formations rather than one...the fact that, when I was tracing over my "Manitou Island" map and trying to figure out where to put some of the formations, the position of Chimney Rock kept changing! In some maps it was way further along the shore than on others! But I just chalked that up to cartographer's error. After all, some of the other land features were askew on other maps, too. (I based my map most closely on the State Park map, since I feel I can trust their map the most. It was also the most detailed.) A couple of the older maps, by the way, were WAY off on the location of Pontiac's Lookout.

If there had in fact been a Chimney Rock AND a Sunset Rock, it would have accounted for the discrepancies in the formation's location on the maps. But as I said--I've seen absolutely NOTHING to indicate there was ever more than one formation which bore either of those names. Where did this guy get the info that there were TWO such rocks? The book is VERY detailed--this guy actually walked all over and surveyed the island. I doubt he would make a mistake. So why is he the only one who reported this?

Truly truly baffling. o_o I wonder if the park pulled a bait-and-switch and maybe KNOCKED DOWN THE OTHER ROCK WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING?? Well, yeah, that sounds stupid, but take a look what they did to Fairy Arch and Scott's Cave!

Well, anyway...the book also has cutaway sections of the lake levels covering the island at various times in the past (so I was PARTLY right in my pessimism, even if I find this interesting now), and it's so cool to see how the island looked thousands of years ago--from the dinky "Ancient Island" of just the little area around Fort Holmes, to the entire island of today. It's so weird to imagine the waters of ancient Lake Nipissing or Algonquin surging around the mouth of Skull Cave...which now lies far inland, upon a rise. It's strange to think of Sugar Loaf Rock, also inland, as once having been a little island of its own, or having been attached to the high bluff from which, today, you can look down upon the rock. Can you think of how things would have looked way back then? So weird and different!

So to put it shortly, I likey this book. :) Good investment.