The story behind the greatest 5-mile road trip on the planet: the Mackinac Bridge.

Once upon a time, our great state was divided, Lower and Upper, by the very deep, very blue water (or in the winter, thick, white ice) of the Straits of Mackinac. Then, on November 1, 1957, miraculous ribbons of asphalt, wire and two majestic towers knit together to become the Mackinac Bridge.

Two hundred miles away, Detroit was ready with visions of family station wagons, sedans and sports cars zipping across what was once an abyss. In a sense, the two—the bridge and the automobile—grew up together, in a story that began in 1886, with the first patents for the gas-powered automobile granted to Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler. The very next year, David Steinman was born to a family who lived in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. All his life, he loved books and poetry and bridges. Near the end of this rich life, he would design the Mackinac Bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge, the first steel-wire suspension bridge in the world, finished in 1883, caught more than just a little boy’s fancy. It inspired folks in Michigan to dream big—a longest-bridge-in-the-world kind of big. A 5-mile feat of engineering suspended 500 feet over water 250 feet deep. A feat that had never been performed in the history of the world. In France, Gustave Eiffel was dreaming of a crazy iron structure that would rise a breathtaking 1,000 feet in the air. In Michigan, they wanted to go long. Way long.