Father Jacques Marquette earned fame as an early explorer, and we found that you have to be a bit of an explorer to discover the national memorial dedicated to him near St. Ignace, Michigan.
I had no idea that there was a national memorial here until I saw a sign for it as we headed south on the I-75 expressway prior to crossing the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan's Lower Peninsula.
The 52--acre memorial site sits on a rise overlooking bridge in the Straits State Park.
Michigan's Department of Natural Resources administrates the site, which the state owns. Unlike many other memorials affiliated with the National Park Service, the Marquette site is not on the National Historic Register of Places, but it still draws 17,000 visitors each year.
The site is pretty unassuming, perhaps as the devout Jesuit priest it honors was in life, consisting of a pavilion and a short interpretive trail leading to a panoramic view of the Mackinac Bridge. A picnic area and public bathrooms are also at the site.
So, who is the man the site honors?
Father Marquette, born in France in 1637, became a missionary during the 1650s. In 1666, he arrived in Quebec, a major settlement in New France. The New France colony covered a large part in what is now North America, stretching across what is now southern Canada and the northern United States from Newfoundland to the Great Lakes and down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Marquette traveled throughout the colony for several years and spent a lot of his time with different Native peoples in the region and learning as many as six of their tribal languages.
Marquette established some of Michigan's earliest settlements at Sault Ste. Marie in 1668 and at St. Ignace in 1671. The name of the settlement at St. Ignace honored founder of the Jesuit order, St. Ignatius of Loyola.
France had a keen interest in exploring the central regions of the new country and finding a navigable route to the Pacific Ocean from there.
In 1672, Marquette joined an expedition led by French explorer Louis Joliet as a chaplain, leaving St. Ignace for what would be a 3,000-mile trip to explore and map much of the then largely unknown Mississippi Valley area. The expedition went from present-day Michigan south to a where the Arkansas River met the Mississippi River. The discovery of easily accessed farmland in the area proved the worth of the land to France and its plans to settle the colony.
The group traveled mostly by canoe, and Joliet's notes and maps of the trip suffered water damage rendering them of little or no use. Fortunately for Joliet and the expedition's French sponsors, Father Marquette also kept meticulous notes and made his own drawings of the trip. His work became the basis for the most accurate maps of the region for that time and especially interest historians seeking to study the various native tribes in the region during that time.
In 1674, Marquette set out on a missionary expedition. He contracted dysentery along the way and died on May 18, 1675.
There is some controversy as to where, exactly, Marquette died. Many sources give Ludington, on the shores of Lake Michigan in Michigan's Lower Peninsula as his death site. We've also seen a state historical marker farther north in Frankfort, Michigan, that claims the priest died near an outlet of the Betsie River there.
In any case, by 1677, Father Marquette's friends brought his remains to the chapel of his St. Ignace mission for burial. The site is near the Museum of Ojibwa Culture on State Street there.
Authorization for the memorial to honor Marquette came on December 20, 1975.
The memorial is a pavilion that looks like a pretty typical mid-1970s design, featuring a 12-sided polygonal roof with a 25-foot spire of thick beams rising through a central opening in the roof.
The roof opening and partial walls of the structure let in natural light that allows visitors to read informational placards about Marquette's life along the walls and a relief map of Marquette's travels centered among limestone pavers on the floor. Visitors can linger in the 45-foot diameter pavilion to learn more about Marquette or sit on benches lining the space along the walls.
A museum built nearby in 1980 burned to the ground in a fire sparked by a lightning strike in March of 2000. The State and St. Ignace continue to explore ways to redevelop the site or re-build the museum, which cost $750,000 in 1980, but funding problems hamper those efforts.
The memorial is open daily from early April through late November. There is no admission to the memorial site, although you need a state park pass to enter the park.
It takes about an hour to see the memorial, walk the 15-station interpretive trail and walk out to see the bridge view.
Want to learn more about Father Marquette and his life? Check out Father Marquette's Journal, Marquette and Joliet: Quest for the Mississippi by Alexander Zelenyj or Searching for Marquette: A Pilgrimage in Art by Ruth D. Nelson.
© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved
Fascinating history - and I love that stone that shows his route!
Posted by: wanderingeducators | April 08, 2014 at 08:06 AM