"The Mackinac Bridge: a Political History" focuses on the decision to build what is today the iconic bridge that appears on many Michigan vehicle license plates, endless postcards, and virtually every other imaginable product. In hindsight the need for the Mackinac Bridge seems obvious, but many during the 1950s deemed it an unnecessary waste of the taxpayers' dollar.
For much of the 1930s the leaders in state government discussed building a bridge at the Straits of Mackinac. Engineers were hired and plans drawn, but for a variety of reasons construction was never begun. In 1947 concerns about the technical feasibility of such a venture and its high cost led the state legislature to abandon the project. Seemingly the final nail had been put into the coffin of a bridge at Mackinac.
However, W. Stewart Woodfill, the general manager of Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel, disagreed with the legislature's decision. In 1949 he formed the Mackinac Bridge Citizens Committee to lobby for a bridge. The Citizen's Committee worked in conjunction with G. Mennen Williams, the newly elected Democratic governor, who also supported building a bridge. The single difference between Woodfill's committee and the governor was party affiliation; Woodfill recruited Republicans willing to lobby the Republic controlled legislature. Republicans swayed by Woodfill's committee, coupled with Williams' Democratic votes, resulted in the passage of Public Act 21 of 1950 which created a Mackinac Bridge Authority, empowered to study the feasibility of building a bridge at the Straits.
The Authority worked diligently and in September 1952 the Mackinac Bridge Authority asked the legislature for a $2 million loan to pay engineers to design a bridge. The proposed legislation failed. The reason the legislation failed was straightforward-leading officials were convinced that the bridge would require a permanent state subsidy; something they opposed. One of the most severe critics of the bridge proposal was State Highway Commissioner Charles M. Ziegler. Although Ziegler argued publicly that he did not oppose constructing a bridge at Mackinac, stating that "I have always supported the best possible connection [between Michigan's peninsulas], whether it be by bridge, tunnel or ferries," Ziegler also consistently argued that a bridge would be too expensive to pay for itself through tolls alone. Ziegler estimated that the annual bridge bond payments, plus the yearly operating costs, would be $4.7 million. In 1950, automobile ferry revenue at the Straits of Mackinac was approximately $1.1 million. Ziegler concluded that even if, as proposed, the bridge toll was set 25 percent higher than the ferry toll, a bridge at the Straits of Mackinac would require an annual state subsidy.
Instead of a $2 million loan the Mackinac Bridge Authority had requested, the legislature adopted Public Act 214 of 1952, which authorized the Authority to sell revenue bonds to pay for all of the expenses related to the bridge project. Tolls collected from bridge users would be used to repay these bonds. No money would be taken from the state's general-revenue fund to pay for a bridge. The legislature had given the Mackinac Bridge Authority permission to build a bridge, but only if the Authority could find someone other than the state's taxpayers to finance it.
On March 18, 1953, 225 financial representatives assembled in New York City to hear a delegation led by Governor Williams offer $96 million in bonds to finance the Mackinac Bridge The meeting was decidedly awkward, however, as the governor attempted to sidestep the reason why the state legislature refused to help finance the project. Wall St. knew only too well that back home in Michigan the state highway commissioner and several others had questioned the financial viability of the project. Only one-third of these bonds were subscribed. Many potential purchasers remarked that they were unwilling to invest in a public-works project that the state of Michigan would not support financially.
To answer this criticism a bill was introduced into the legislature to appropriate $417,000 annually for a bridge-if the bonds were sold by December 31, 1953. This amount was equal to the state's subsidy for ferry service at the Straits and supporters of the legislation argued that this was not a "new" expense but rather a redirection of existing funds already being spent to move automobiles across the Straits. It was a clever argument that proved totally unconvincing. The bill went nowhere. However, when legislative leaders desperately needed votes to pass a proposed tax bill that was the centerpiece of their agenda, Representative Emil Peltz of Rogers City proposed a deal. He would supply the votes needed to pass the tax bill, but only if the bridge appropriation bill was passed first. The deal was made, hands were shaken, and the Mackinac Bridge was guaranteed $417,000 in annual support from the state, if the bonds could be sold.
With this subsidy in hand, and after much discussion and delay caused by concern over how best to go forward, the Mackinac Bridge Authority planned to offer its bonds for sale again in late December 1953. A few days before the event, Senator Haskell Nichols from Jackson County, in a last-ditch effort to stop the bridge, petitioned the Michigan Supreme Court to prohibit the bond sale until a hearing could take place. Nichols probably knew that his petition was very unlikely to actually be granted, but as a smart politician he also knew that because a hearing could not be scheduled until after the December 31 legislative deadline had passed, and order to stop the sale would effectively kill the bridge regardless of the Court's ruling on the merits of his petition.