Fort de Buade: New France's Straits Outpost

The ground where Saint Ignace now stands was once France's northernmost military anchor in the heart of the continent.

Fort de Buade was built in the sixteen eighties, with sources differing on the exact year, at the Straits of Mackinac, the narrow waterway connecting Lakes Huron and Michigan. France needed to control this chokepoint: it was the gateway between the fur-rich upper Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence trade routes flowing east. The fort was named for Louis de Buade de Frontenac, governor of New France, the same man who sent La Salle down the Mississippi and repeatedly defied orders from Paris to expand the interior empire.

The garrison held until France pulled back in seventeen oh one, consolidating at Detroit. But Saint Ignace grew up around the fort's footprint, and the Jesuit mission next door outlasted the soldiers by centuries. The Straits that made it strategically vital now carry the Mackinac Bridge, one of the longest suspension bridges in the Western Hemisphere.