[4] For millennia before the arrival of Europeans, Mackinac Island was home and meeting place for Chippewa (Anishinaabeg), Huron, Menominee, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Ottawa, and other Native American Indian tribes.

They enjoyed aurora borealis displays, pure fresh water, ice-locked winters, quiet snow storms, spring trees and birds, pleasant summers, and autumn leaves.

Nothing then disturbed thy quiet and deep solitude but the chippering of birds and the rustling of the leaves of the silver-barked birch.”[5][6] Jean Nicolet and Father Barthélemy Vimont were the first Europeans known to pass through the Straits of Mackinac (1634–1635).

[7] Jesuit fathers Charles Dablon and Jacques Marquette founded Catholic missions on Mackinac Island, St. Ignace, and Mackinaw City.

Captain Robertson built a small summer house on a high limestone outcropping less than a mile away from the Fort at the southeast corner of the island (today's Mission Point).

The school building was framed and enclosed by workers from Detroit, using timbers obtained from a sawmill on Mill Creek (6 mi SE of current day Mackinaw City).

Enrollment soon averaged 150 Native American pupils per year with >100 receiving free board, room, and clothing from the mission family.

After the American government began deporting some of the tribes to reservations west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s, the school had difficulty recruiting students.

[1] In 1942, a multi-national group, friends of the Moral Re-Armament (MRA), led by Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman began meeting together on Mackinac Island.

[19] Groundbreaking ceremonies at Mission Point were held by the MRA in October 1954, when 150-year-old Norway pine logs were cut and brought in from nearby Bois Blanc Island.

The logs were towed across the stormy waters of Lake Huron and floated onto the Mission Point shore before the straits froze for the winter.

[29][30][31] In the winter of 1955, immediately after construction of the Theater, MRA workers began building the Great Hall complex at Mission Point (64,732 ft2[24]).

The teepee-shaped Great Hall features 51-foot logs cut from one of the last stands of virgin Norway pine in the Tahquamenon Falls State Park in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

It is also consistent with a newspaper report in which Howard Santigo, grandson of a Mackinac Island Chippewa Indian chief, recounted this same legend of the Great Spirit.

[2] In 1893, D.H. Kelton related a similar tale in which the ‘suffering ones’ of every race and clime would be invited to draw their canoes up onto the eastern shore of Mackinac Island, pass through Arch Rock, and meet in a wigwam built of the tallest trees (home of the great spirit Gitche Manitou).

[34][35] Every spring and summer for a decade after its construction, the Great Hall complex attracted thousands of MRA conference delegates from the US, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

[15][19] Then, in 1965, the Great Hall complex was deeded over to Mackinac College, an institution legally independent of MRA and chartered by the Michigan Board of Education.

The completed three-story West Residence was finished with brick and limestone, having a two-story high entryway with a five-foot (1.5 m) marble-paneled fireplace (Johnson Hall).

In 1965 the West Residence was deeded over to Mackinac College, an institution legally independent of MRA and chartered by the Michigan Board of Education.

A United Press International reporter claimed that the saga of its building was “the greatest news story of our age.” MRA constructed the Studio to accommodate filming and processing of its movies and television programs.

In the 1960s these rooms were fully furnished, in addition to a huge costume department, lighting switchboard, laboratories for film processing and editing, and construction shops.

[19][41] In late 1965 the Studio was deeded over to Mackinac College, an institution legally independent of MRA and chartered by the Michigan Board of Education.

For the 1979 summer season, Universal Studios leased the sound stage to produce the motion picture Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.

Chairman of Avon Products, Inc.) jump-started planning for the Peter Howard Memorial Library (capacity 100,000 books; 36,000 ft2[24]), named for the British journalist, playwright, and author who was (briefly) head of MRA (born 1908 – died 1965).

Construction supervisors reported that the Clark Center and the Peter Howard Library were built by more than 325 volunteer workers from 13 different countries.

Twenty-four volunteers came from South Korea, 16 from Japan, 9 from Denmark, 8 from Jamaica, 7 from Indonesia, 2 from Finland and 1 each from Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Trinidad and Tobago.

During the college years, the building included 30 classrooms, laboratories, offices, lounges, a 300-seat lecture-recital hall, and a 150-seat natural science demonstration room.

In late 1987 it was sold to John Shufelt with the rest of the campus, and in 2014 to Dennert O. and Suzanne Ware;[27] it has been adapted as the Mission Point Resort.

Mission Point Resort was purchased in 2014 by Dennert O. and Suzanne Ware of San Antonio, Texas, who also own Silver Birches on Mackinac Island.

The Wares are planning a multimillion-dollar property-wide upgrade over the next few years that will include an expanded spa and pool complex and guest room improvements.