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The Port Sanilac Department of Public Safety is a full service agency providing Police, Fire and EMS services
to the Village of Port Sanilac with surrounding communities contracting for Fire/EMS services.
This village was originally a lumberjack settlement on the shore of Lake Huron
named "Bark Shanty." In the late 1840s and 1850s, the settlement gained its first sawmill,
schoolhouse, and general store. In 1854, Bark Shanty's first post office opened. In 1857 the village was renamed
to Port Sanilac, as it is in Sanilac Township in Sanilac County. Local legend attributes the name to a Wyandotte
Indian Chief named Sanilac.[3] See List of Michigan county name etymologies.
Local landmarks include the Port Sanilac lighthouse (burning kerosene from its opening in 1886 until its
electrification in 1924) and a twenty-room Victorian mansion (now a museum) built in 1872 by a horse-and-buggy doctor,
Dr. Joseph Loop.
The Sanilac Shores Underwater Preserve is a designated ship wreck preserve that is very
popular with scuba divers.
