Grosse Ile's two bridges: pay on the north end, free on the south

Living on Grosse Ile means choosing a bridge every time you leave home, and one of them charges you. The big island in the lower Detroit River — its name is just French for “big island,” given by explorers back in 1679 — connects to the Downriver mainland by two spans, and they could hardly be more different.

The north bridge is the famous one: a privately owned toll swing bridge that opened on Thanksgiving Day, 1913. A wealthy island landowner named Edward Voigt got it built, and the story Grosse Ilers love is that one reason he wanted it was to move his prized Percheron draft horses to the mainland more easily. More than a century later it’s still privately run, still swings open for passing boats, and still collects a toll from every car — one of the very few toll bridges left in Michigan.

The south bridge is free, and it’s free because it used to carry trains. The Canada Southern railroad built a crossing here in 1873; after the trains quit, Wayne County took the old structure and reopened it in 1931 for cars, bikes, and walkers. Locals just call it the Free Bridge.

So the island runs on a small daily calculus that no one else in the county thinks about: the toll bridge is closer and quicker for the north end, the Free Bridge saves the fare if you’ve got the time to drive to it. When one bridge shuts for repairs, the whole island funnels onto the other, and Grosse Ile remembers fast how few ways there are off a river island. The community has even mulled buying a bridge of its own — because on Grosse Ile, the road home is never quite a given.