Located west of the international border that separates the United States from the Canadian province of Ontario, the island is within the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence seaway.

By the time the first Europeans arrived in the early 1600s, the area around Neebish was occupied by such historic and existing tribes as the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi, all Algonquian-speaking peoples.

The two nations appointed commissioners to survey the boundary and determine the border between the United States and Canada as envisioned in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.

Anthony Barclay, the British boundary commissioner, offered the name as a compliment to the United States, as Tammany was considered the Indian saint of New Englanders.

Rains, a British national, had earlier attempted to start a colony in the 1830s on neighbouring St. Joseph Island, part of Ontario, Canada.

[9] In 1933, a privately run car ferry began operating to provide connections between the Michigan mainland and the west side of the island.

To accommodate them and to ease navigation, the American government dredged and dynamited limestone from the Munuscong Channel between Neebish and St. Joseph islands in 1856 and 1905.

[12] The absence of any alternate route resulted in both upbound and downbound traffic on the St. Marys River having to navigate the twisting narrows of the Munuscong Channel.

On September 5, 1899, the steamer Douglass Houghton, downbound north of Sailors’ Encampment, collided with a barge it was towing and sank.

In addition to deepening the channel, this work reduced the Neebish rapids that had characterized the west side of the island until that point.

[16] The ferry is owned, maintained, and fueled by the Eastern Upper Peninsula Transportation Authority; it is operated under contract by a private firm.

The island had many one-room school houses earlier in its history, but most are no longer in operation because of changes in population and educational expectations.

Born as Pat Cook, one of twelve children of the United States lighthouse keeper and his wife, she grew up with familiar views of lake freighters and related traffic.

In the film The Switch (2010), starring Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman, Neebish Island is referred to as the site of the cabin of parents of Roland Nilson (played by Patrick Wilson).