Does Mackinac Island Have a Mayor? How the Island Is Actually Governed

Somewhere around the second day of a Mackinac Island trip, most visitors start asking the same question. Who decides how all of this works? Somebody has to say that cars stay off the roads, that a cottage cannot be painted a new color, that the horses get watered and the streets get swept. The answer is more fun than a plain city hall, because two very different groups run this island at the same time. One is a small city government with an elected mayor who has held the job longer than almost anyone in America. The other is a state board, picked by the governor, that controls most of the island’s land. Once you see how the two fit together, nearly every odd thing about this place starts to make sense.

Yes, There Is a Mayor, and She Has Held the Job Since 1975

Mackinac Island is a Michigan city with an elected mayor. The city’s current official listing names Margaret M. Doud as mayor and says she has served since 1975. In May 2025, the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau reported that she won her 50th election to another one-year term and was the longest-serving mayor in the United States. She is also the owner of the Windermere Hotel. Her long public service is especially notable in a city with a small year-round population and a large seasonal visitor economy.

Why the Mayor Runs for Office Every Single Year

The city charter says the mayor must run for the seat every year, which is rare for an American city of any size. Elections here happen in May rather than November, set by the island’s calendar rather than the national one. The mayor, city clerk, treasurer, assessor, and supervisor are all elected each year. Council members serve three-year terms, with two seats coming up each May. That yearly cycle gives island residents a regular say in who leads them, even though the same names tend to show up on the ballot year after year. It also drops the campaign right as the island wakes up for summer, which gives the whole thing a very local feel.

What the Mayor Actually Does

Under the city charter, the mayor is the top officer of the city and also leads the council. Here is the odd part: the mayor runs council meetings but does not get a vote, except to break a tie. Much of the real power comes from picking people. Each year the mayor names members to the city’s many committees, boards, and panels, and the council signs off on those choices. The mayor and council also pass a budget at the end of March for a money year that runs April through March, matching the island’s own rhythm rather than the calendar. It is a part-time job in a town of a few hundred year-round residents, and it looks nothing like being mayor of Detroit.

The City Council and the Services It Runs

The city government is made up of the mayor and six council members, and they meet every other Wednesday through the year. The charter puts law-making power in a council of the mayor, six aldermen elected at large, and the city clerk. Those meetings cover what you would expect any small town to cover, plus a few things you would not. Street repair in a place with no cars. Harbor questions. Trash that has to leave by boat. And the daily puzzle of hosting more than 800,000 island visitors each year in a town whose year-round population is only a few hundred people. The city also runs its own police and fire departments, plus Mackinac Marine Rescue.

Policing and Emergency Services Without Cars

A police force on an island with no cars is a very different job. Officers patrol on bikes and on foot, with motor vehicles allowed for emergency and essential-service purposes. The fire department and the marine rescue crew live with the same limit and the same perk. Everything has to be planned around horse-drawn drays, bikes, and boats, but the whole area they cover is only about four square miles. Our longer look at emergency services on a car-free island explains how ambulances, fire crews, and winter coverage really work once the ferries stop running.

The Other Half: The Mackinac Island State Park Commission

Here is where governance becomes unusual. The city provides municipal services and enforces local law, while more than 80 percent of the island lies within Mackinac Island State Park and is administered by the Mackinac Island State Park Commission. The commission has seven members appointed by Michigan’s governor with the consent of the state Senate. City ordinances and park rules can both matter, depending on the activity and location. The commission runs Mackinac State Historic Parks, which cares for roughly 1,800 acres on the island plus several sites on the mainland. It operates as a Type I agency within the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Under that structure, the commission retains authority for the mission, policies, objectives, and direction of the properties under its jurisdiction.

How the Park Commission Came to Exist

The park history here is remarkable. In 1875, the federal land on Mackinac Island, then about half the island, was named the second national park in the country, right after Yellowstone. Twenty years later, in 1895, the federal government handed it over to the State of Michigan, and it became Michigan’s first state park. Lawmakers created the Mackinac Island State Park Commission that same year to look after the park and its old buildings. Over the next century the commission slowly added more land until the park covered more than eighty percent of the island. That long stretch of care is the main reason the island still looks the way it does, a story we dig into in our piece on who owns Mackinac Island land.

What the Commission Controls Day to Day

If you tour Fort Mackinac, walk the woodland trails, stop at Arch Rock, climb to Fort Holmes, or eat lunch at British Landing, you are on commission land and following commission rules. The board sets ticket prices for the historic sites, keeps up the trails and the park stretches of the shore road, runs the visitor center, and decides what may be built or changed inside park lines. It meets in public and reviews its budget and fees each year, usually in winter before the season opens. For visitors, city ordinances and state-park rules work together across the island, with the applicable authority depending on the activity and location.

The Car Ban: A Perfect Example of Both Bodies at Work

The island’s famous car ban shows exactly how the two-part system works. On July 6, 1898, the village council banned horseless carriages from its streets after a group of carriage drivers asked them to, arguing that the machines were loud, dirty, and dangerous to horses and people on foot. That law covered only the village. In 1901, the Mackinac Island State Park Commission followed with a ban on automobiles within state park land. Together, the city and park rules created the largely automobile-free system that still shapes Mackinac Island, subject to limited exceptions such as emergency and service vehicles.

Why the Rule Survived

Plenty of towns have tried car limits and then quietly dropped them. Mackinac Island did not, mostly because the ban grew into the island’s whole way of making a living. Horses, carriages, dockporters, and bikes are not charming leftovers. They are the transport system, and thousands of jobs rest on visitors who come here for a place that feels different. Our look at how the island’s economy works without cars or chain stores traces how deeply that one choice runs through daily life. Once a whole economy is built on a rule, undoing it stops being thinkable.

What This Means for You as a Visitor

None of this is homework you need before your trip, but a little of it makes the island much easier to read. The rules here are real and they do get enforced, whether that is a leash rule, a limit on where drones may fly, or a stretch of path where bikes are not allowed. When something feels oddly specific, it is usually because a small council or a seven-member board sat down and decided it, often decades ago and almost always for a practical reason. Treating those rules as part of the island’s character rather than a nuisance is the fastest way to fit in. Our guide to island etiquette and the unwritten rules covers the everyday side of the same idea.

Stay in the Heart of the Town That Governs Itself

There is something quietly lovely about walking a street that a village council kept free of cars in 1898 and knowing it has stayed that way ever since. Inn on Mackinac sits right in that historic downtown, steps from Main Street, Marquette Park, and the ferry docks, in the very blocks those old decisions were meant to protect. If this island’s careful, hundred-year-old way of running itself makes you want to see the results up close, book your stay with Inn on Mackinac and spend a few days inside the story.

Category: Mackinac Island