Kelleys Island ferry: the Marblehead boats that carry the cars

What does an island with no bridge do when it needs a cement mixer, a school bus or a crane? On Kelleys Island, the largest American island in Lake Erie, it calls Marblehead. The Kelleys Island Ferry Boat Line prints a rate card for exactly those loads, right down to an eight-yard cement truck and tankers that sail with nobody else aboard, and it is the only line that carries vehicles of any size to the island.

That is worth knowing before anything else, because this crossing has a naming problem. Search for a Kelleys Island ferry and you will also find Jet Express, an unrelated operator whose catamarans carry passengers only, from downtown Sandusky and from Port Clinton. Those boats land at the Casino Dock in the village; the Marblehead boats land at the Seaway Marina, a couple of blocks east. Neither company sells the other's tickets, and none of the times or prices below apply to Jet Express.

The Marblehead line is a working shuttle: five boats rotating across a little over three miles of the South Passage, carrying lumber, landscaping stone and propane as readily as weekend cyclists, which puts it among the working island boats of the Great Lakes rather than the excursion trade. From late September the schedule steps down week by week until ice decides the matter.

Hourly early in the week, half-hourly by Friday, and a thinner November

2026 schedule periods of September 28 – October 25 and October 26 – November 29, read from the operator's published 2026 schedule on September 24, 2026   Kelleys Island Ferry Boat Line — 2026 Schedule · 2026-09-24

Priced one way at the booth, sold as a round trip online

Two sets of numbers circulate for this crossing and they do not contradict each other. The rate card at the dock is one way: $13.00 for an adult, $23.00 for a car. The online shop sells round trips at exactly double — $26 an adult, $46 a car — and a round-trip ticket is good on any sailing for the rest of the 2026 season.

The card lists vehicles and people on separate lines and never describes the car rate as including a driver, so budget for a ticket for everyone in the car as well as the car itself. Credit cards are taken, card fees may apply, and the operator reserves the right to add an energy surcharge.

2026 rates as published by Kelleys Island Ferry Boat Line, read on September 24, 2026   Kelleys Island Ferry Boat Line — Ferry Fares (2026 rate card) and the rates panel of the 2026 schedule · 2026-09-24

A ramp on Marblehead's Main Street and a marina east of the island village

Neither landing is a public terminal. The Marblehead side is the ferry company's own lot and ramp; the island side is a private marina that doubles as the arrival hall.

The South Passage, a little over three miles north of Marblehead

The line runs almost due north from the Marblehead peninsula to the south shore of the island, through the stretch of Lake Erie the operator calls the South Passage. It is shallow water for a crossing this wide — about 25 feet at the deepest point — and the boats take it at around 8.5 knots.

What catches people out at the Marblehead ramp

• An online ticket is not a place in line

  Buying ahead saves time at the booth and nothing else. The company is explicit that boarding is first come, first served, so allow for a wait on a busy Saturday.

• Jet Express lands somewhere else

  The fast catamarans from downtown Sandusky and Port Clinton carry passengers only and tie up at the Casino Dock on Division Street. Their tickets, times and fares have nothing to do with the Marblehead boats.

• Parking is sold by the month

  The only option at the dock is a $20 pass per vehicle, valid for one month. There is no cheaper day rate listed.

• Hang on to the return half

  Tickets are collected on the way back to Marblehead, not on the way out. Lose it on the island and you are buying again.

• Leashed dogs ride along

  Dogs ride too, leashed; the ticket pages sell the line as pet-friendly.

• Anything bigger than a pickup, call first

  Tour buses, RVs and tractor-trailers can be carried, but commercial and heavy loads are quoted by phone on 419-798-9763, and placarded hazardous cargo sails on its own trips.

Limestone, glacial grooves and the brothers who bought the whole island

Datus and Irad Kelley began buying the island parcel by parcel in 1833 until they owned all of it; by 1840, with 68 residents, Cunningham's Island had been renamed after them. The brothers ran timber, orchards, vineyards and, above all, limestone quarries. By 1891 the quarry operators had merged into the Kelleys Island Lime and Stone Company, whose pit ran for more than a mile across the island, and most of the quarrying had stopped by around 1940.

Quarrying also exposed the island's best-known sight, the glacial grooves on the north shore: a trench 15 feet deep and 35 feet wide cut by ice sheets moving down from Ontario, which Ohio's Department of Natural Resources calls the largest known example of glacial striations. They became a state memorial in 1932, and the island a state park in 1956. The tie to the mainland runs deeper than the ferry, too: the endangered lakeside daisy was transplanted to the island from its only known Ohio habitat, an active quarry on the Marblehead peninsula. For a neighboring island that is reached by a different route, see the Miller Ferry to Put-in-Bay.

From the Juliet Alica to the Carmen Lee: 15 cars up to 36

Marblehead to Kelleys: what people ask before they drive up