GRAND TRAVERSE LIGHTHOUSE-MICHIGAN

      
             Grand Traverse Lighthouse in 1883, note construction year on lighthouse.     Photograph courtesy National Archives

On September 28, 1850, Congress appropriated $4,000 for a lighthouse on the northern tip of Leelanau Peninsula. President Millard Fillmore signed an executive order on June 30, 1851, reserving 58.75 acres of public land for Grand Traverse Lighthouse, which was also known early on as Cat Head Lighthouse due to its proximity to Cat Head Point. Construction at the site began in late 1851, with materials being transported by schooner to the point and then being lightered ashore. A two-room dwelling with an attached kitchen and shed was built for the keeper, a position first held by David Moon, and a thirty-foot-tall, conical, brick tower was erected nearby. A fixed light, produced by six lamps and fourteen-inch reflectors, was first exhibited in September 1852, but in 1857, the light source was changed to a fourth-order Fresnel lens. Shortly after being placed in service, Grand Traverse Lighthouse was found to be poorly built and poorly situated. Located near the eastern side of the tip of the peninsula, the lighthouse was useful for vessels entering and leaving Grand Traverse Bay but wasn’t of much service to vessels on Lake Michigan. The original lighthouse was torn down and replaced in 1858 by a two-and-a-half-story dwelling, built using Milwaukee cream city brick and topped by a slate roof. The dwelling measured thirty by thirty-two feet, and one of its gable ends was adorned with a seven-foot-square wooden tower. A fifth-order Fresnel lens was used in the new lighthouse until 1870, when a fourth-order, Barbier and Finestre lens was installed. The Lighthouse Board called this upgrade “a very necessary and decided improvement.” The Lighthouse Board noted in its annual report for 1895 that a fog signal at Grand Traverse Lighthouse was “deemed necessary to navigation” and requested $5,500 for its construction. Congress allocated the funds on July 1, 1898, and contracts were let for the project on January 20, 1899. A substantial structure, built of buff, pressed brick and topped by red, metal tiles, was completed in November 1899 on the shore roughly 140 feet southwest of the lighthouse. Duplicate ten-inch steam whistles, provided by George F. Motter & Sons of York, Pennsylvania under a contract with Ellicott Company of Baltimore, Maryland, were installed in the fog signal building and placed in operation on December 20, 1899. To provide a constant supply of water for the signal, a well was sunk twenty feet west of the building. In 1933, an air diaphone, powered by air compressors driven by diesel engines, replaced the steam whistle. The most active year for the fog signal for which there are records was 1904, when it was in operation some 318 hours and consumed about 49 cords of wood. The light was electrified in 1950, increasing its intensity to 15,000 candlepower. Keepers remained at Grand Traverse Lighthouse until 1972, when the lighthouse was replaced by an automated beacon mounted atop a skeletal tower.