Just on the outskirts of Mackinaw City, Michigan, sightseers and history enthusiasts will find Colonial Michilimackinac State Park. Michilimackinac has been a state park since 1904, and the French restored fort, surrounded by a wooden palisade, was opened in 1933. The early 18th century fort was used as a supply post for French traders, and was not built primarily as a military post. The fort grounds were added as a National Historic Landmark in 1960.
   Here, amid the 13 buildings are appropriately costumed interpreters, who lead walking tours dressed as soldiers, a fur trader, a priest and an apothecary, all demonstrating what life was like many years ago. At appointed times, soldiers fire their muskets on the parade ground, and canon balls are fired across the Straits of Mackinac from an 18th century canon in the general direction of the Mackinac Bridge, better known as the Mighty Mac.
   Native Indians are included here as well. Just outside the fort walls is an encampment, complete with wigwams, where interpreters wear traditional clothing and explain what it was like to live in a Waginogan (a domed or oval birch bark house) or Nasaogan (a triangular-shaped home, usually covered in bark). Also of interest here in summer is the archaeological dig, the longest-running and most extensive archeological excavations in North America.

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