The Sweet Story
While fudge was not invented on Mackinac Island, Mackinac Island’s fudge has become the most popular fudge in America. In the nineteenth century, maple sugar sweets were manufactured by the local Odawa in nearby L’Arbor Croche, packaged in birchbark containers called “mokuks” and shipped from Mackinac Island in steamships touring the Great Lakes to the confectioners in the big cities of America. After the Civil War, Island shopkeepers kept up with the tourists’ requests for sweets by stocking the “mokuks” along with Whitman’s and Stuart’s candies and chocolates.

But tourists wanted something regional; something made on Mackinac rather than something they could easily buy at home. Harry Murdick listened and in the late 1880s opened “Murdick’s Candy Kitchen.” Using marble slabs with the kitchen cooling fans blowing the smell of cooking candy onto the streets, Harry’s sons Rome and Gould turned fudge making into a wonderfully scented spectator sport.

Murdick’s attended county fairs and began to gain a reputation for their famous fudge and soon had long distance customers yearning for more of their confection, thus beginning the fudge shipping business practiced by all fudge shops on Mackinac Island today. By the 1930s, Murdick’s Fudge had grown to the point where they needed summer help. Harold May, a candy maker from Kansas, answered the ad. By the 1940s, Gould Murdick was looking to retire and sold his business to Harold May. After World War II, the economy boomed and May’s Fudge began supplying postwar tourists with fudge, quality chocolates and candies. May is credited with Mackinac Island Fudge famous. Soon Selma Dufina, Jim Marshall and Jerome Murdick opened shops honing their fudge-making skills to help fill the demand for fudge in the new economy.

Looking to grab a piece of the action, Harry Ryba, a Detroiter who made and sold fudge at State Fairs, bought a shop with his son-in-law Victor Callewaert on Main Street. He believed in the spectator sport of fudge making and strategically located his marble slabs in his storefront windows, used Murdick’s ploy of blowing the smell of fudge making onto the Island’s streets and began to attract crowds to his store.

The fudge business boomed and soon Frank Nephew opened Joanne’s Fudge, the Murray Hotel began selling pan-cooked fudge from their porch and Bob Benser purchased Murdick’s Fudge from the soon-to-be-retired Jerome Murdick to preserve Mackinac Island’s first fudge making business.

Mackinac Island’s fudge is an Island institution that is now known worldwide. Fudge fanatics have been dubbed “fudgies:” a term that has become synonymous with tourists in Northern Michigan. Fifteen stores now operate on Mackinac Island and with so many choices; the question remains…who has the best fudge? Only the fudgie knows for sure.
For more information about the history of Mackinac Island’s Fudge read: Fudge: Mackinac's Sweet Souvenir, by Phil Porter, Director of Mackinac State Historic Parks, and available from Mackinac State Historic Parks by calling (231) 436-4100.