POINT BETSIE LIGHTHOUSE-MICHIGAN

 

 

Congress appropriated $5,000 for Point Betsie Lighthouse on March 3, 1853. A contract was let for the lighthouse in 1854, but the light was not activated until October 20, 1858. The yellow-brick lighthouse consisted of a circular, thirty-seven-foot tower connected by a passageway to a two-story dwelling. A fourth-order Fresnel lens was installed in the tower’s lantern room, where it produced a fixed white light varied by a white flash at a focal plane of fifty-three feet above the lake. Just a year after it was placed in service, the lighthouse site had to be protected from the lake, and over the years various measures were used to keep Lake Michigan at bay. In 1880, the Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board included the following paragraph, which seemed to foretell an early end to Point Bestie Lighthouse. This is one of the most important lights on Lake Michigan. The present light has never given satisfaction. The tower was built by contract in 1858 and the work was miserably done. A new tower with sufficient height to put the focal plane 100 feet above the lake should be built, and the fourth-order lens should be replaced by a third-order. An appropriation of $40,000 is recommended for this work. The Lighthouse Board repeated this request for several years, but then, “after careful consideration,” it decided in 1889 that since the light from Point Betsie already overlapped with that of South Manitou Island Lighthouse, the next light north, what was really needed at the point was a fog signal and a lens that produced a more frequent flash. The following year, a concrete apron, poured around 1873 to protect the lighthouse, was broken out and an underpinning of concrete, four feet deep, was placed beneath the tower to provide a secure foundation. A 240-foot revetment, consisting of two rows of piles driven to a depth of at least ten feet and capped with a stone-filled wooden crib, was also built along the shore in front of the lighthouse in 1890. The requested steam fog signal arrived on December 31, 1891, after an act earlier that year had provided $5,500 for its constructions, and a change in the light came on April 23, 1892, when a new fourth-order lens reduced the period between the light’s white flashes from ninety to ten seconds. The fog signal was housed in a frame building, built 120 feet north of the lighthouse and covered with corrugated iron siding and roofing. A circular iron oil house with a capacity of 300 gallons was also added to the station in 1892. The extra work needed to run the fog signal led to the assignment of an assistant keeper to Point Betsie. The living portion of the lighthouse was renovated in 1895, when an additional six rooms were added to the dwelling, allowing it to be separated into two apartments. On November 3, 1899, the dwelling and tower were painted white with red roofs to provide a better daymark for mariners. In 1912, a ten-inch chime whistle, operated by compressed air, replaced the steam fog signal plant at Point Betsie. The following year, the illumination for the light was changed to incandescent oil vapor, increasing the intensity of the light to 55,000 candlepower. The station was electrified in 1921, allowing a type “G” diaphone, which had a sound radius several times that of the air whistle, to be used. A radiobeacon was placed in commission at the station on February 28, 1927. In the fall of 1983, the Coast Guard automated Point Betsie Lighthouse and Sherwood Point Lighthouse, the last two staffed lighthouses on the Great Lakes. Coast Guard personnel continued to live at Point Betsie until the dwelling's heating system failed in 1996, prompting the Coast Guard to relocate its staff to Frankfort.  

 

Early view of Point Betsie Lighthouse
Photograph courtesy National Archives