- Dates
- 1968-02-20 – circa 1968-02-23
- Kind
- Transportation
- Where
- Beaver Island · Garden Island · Hog Island · Hat Island · Cross Village
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- transportationmaritimecommunityheritage
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
The March 1968 Beaver Beacon published Phil Gregg’s first-person account of a winter snowmobile crossing from Beaver Island to Cross Village. The party mustered on February 20 and left the next day with snow machines, sledges, and passengers. The reported route ran through Garden, Hog, and Hat Islands, past White Shoals and Waugoshance Point, and across the Mackinaw’s icebreaker channel before reaching the Cross Village beach at 6:20 p.m. After a layover, the party began its return the following morning and reached Beaver Island after additional equipment repairs and a stop at Hog Island.
Evidence and limits
This is a detailed community travel account, not a surveyed route, ice-safety assessment, vehicle log, or official crossing record. It reports severe cold, blowing snow, rough ice, equipment failures, and a thin section at the icebreaker channel, but those observations should not be generalized into current navigation or winter-travel advice. The printed page names “Walt Wojan,” while the remote OCR reads “Walt Wogan”; the record intentionally does not resolve that identity conflict.
Open questions
- Are photographs, trip notes, or other accounts of the crossing preserved?
- Does the printed name “Walt Wojan” identify an existing island family record, or is it a typographic variation?
- Are the reported February 1968 ice conditions corroborated by weather, Coast Guard, or harbor records?
See also
Sources
- Remote OCR used for search and transcription support; it is not an independent witness and is read against the held issue PDF.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1968-03_Beaver-Beacon
- The held nine-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1968-03_Beaver-Beacon
Added 3 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Beaver Island snowmobile party makes a winter-ice crossing to Cross Village, 1968”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/beaver-island-snowmobile-safari-cross-village-1968/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Beacon, March 1968, “Beaver Tales: Safari to Cross Village,” OCR derivative, pp. 5–7. (and 1 further source listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-03. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Beaver Island snowmobile party makes a winter-ice crossing to Cross Village, 1968”RIS for “Beaver Island snowmobile party makes a winter-ice crossing to Cross Village, 1968”