After careful consideration by a board of officers from the Corps of Engineers, Sand Beach was selected in 1872 as the site for an artificial harbor to provide refuge for mariners caught in a storm in the southern portion of Lake Huron. Construction commenced in 1873 on a project that provided for a breakwater of stone-filled cribwork filled to shelter an area of some 650 acres. When completed in 1885 at a cost of $975,000, the breakwater provided the only safe refuge on the western coast of Lake Huron between Tawas Bay and the St. Clair River, a distance of 115 miles. The breakwater commenced near the shore, three-quarters of a mile north of the dock at Sand Beach, and ran roughly east for 500 yards, followed by a 100-yard gap for the harbor’s northern entrance and another 100-yard segment of breakwater. From this point, the breakwater angled southeast for 1,320 yards, before turning due south for another 100 yards. A gap of 200 yards was left for the harbor’s eastern entrance, and the breakwater then continued south for another 633 yards. A pierhead light was placed in operation on October 25, 1875 at the “angle of the breakwater” to mark the structure until the project was complete and additional lights could be built. This first light consisted of a square, open-frame tower surmounted by an octagonal lantern room. A fourth-order lens was used to produce a fixed white light at a focal plane of thirty-five feet. Anticipating the completion of the breakwater, the Lighthouse Board entered into a contract for duplicate steam fog signals, and these were delivered in October 1883. Construction of the foundation crib for the primary light to mark the harbor’s eastern entrance began on May 19, 1884, and was completed just over a month later on June 25. This wooden crib was positioned on the northern side of the entrance behind the breakwater in twenty-eight feet of water. After the crib was filled with stone and planked over, the building of the superstructure was deferred until the next season. Work at the site resumed in May 1885. First, a concrete pier, forty feet wide and sixty feet long, was built atop the wooden crib. This concrete foundation rose ten feet above the lake and contained a circular cellar with a depth of seven feet and a diameter of sixteen feet for the lighthouse and a second cellar for the fog signal building. Atop the foundation was erected a circular, cast-iron tower that rose to a height of forty-four feet, four inches. The lower three stories of the three-quarters-of-an-inch-thick, cast-iron tower were lined with brick and lighted by rectangular windows, while the fourth-story, watchroom and lantern room were lined with wood and illuminated by porthole windows. The tower gently tapers from a diameter of twenty-two feet at its base, to eighteen feet at the parapet. The lighthouse’s daymark was originally a brown tower with a black lantern room, and the characteristic of its light was fixed white varied every ninety seconds by a red flash. Two panels with ruby screens revolved around the outside of a fixed, fourth-order lens to produce the red flashes. The revolutions were controlled by a Stevens clockwork mechanism, powered by a weight that passed through the floor of the lantern room and down a fifteen-foot-long drop tube. The steam fog signals were housed in a building situated three feet north of the tower. The building measured twenty-two by twenty-nine feet, and its framed roof and walls were lined, inside and out, by iron and filled with lime and sawdust. The ten-inch steam whistle sounded a five-second blast every thirty seconds during periods of reduced visibility. The fog signal was typically in use for about 175 hours each year, consuming around fifteen tons of coal, but in 1886, the steam whistles were in operation for 636 hours. The main light commenced operation on October 1, 1885, and the fog signal followed suit a week later. To fully mark the harbor entrances, iron, skeletal tripods topped by fixed red lights were established on the south side of the east entrance and the west side of the north entrance on October 1, 1885. The open framework tower erected in 1875 was relocated to the east side of the northern entrance on September 15, 1885, and its lens was changed from fourth to fifth order on October 1, 1885. On the opening of navigation in the spring of 1886, the characteristic of the main light was changed to alternate red and white flashes, spaced by five seconds, through the substitution of a Barbier & Fenestre fourth-order lens. In 1899, the town of Sand Beach, justifiably proud of their commodious harbor, changed its name to Harbor Beach, and the cast-iron lighthouse was subsequently been known as Harbor Beach Lighthouse. On April 12, 1900, the color of the tower was changed from brown to white, and the following year the wooden hand railing surrounding the lantern room was replaced by one of wrought iron. The illuminant used in the main light was changed from oil to incandescent oil vapor on June 30, 1914, increasing the intensity of the flashes roughly six fold. The fog signal was changed to a compressed air diaphone on July 15, 1919 at a cost of $8,382. In 1934, a cable was run from shore to provide commercial power to the lighthouse and fog signal, and a radiobeacon was established at the station. The last Coast Guard crew left the lighthouse in 1967, the same year the fog signal building was removed. The tower’s Fresnel lens was removed in 1986 and placed on display at the Grice House Museum in Harbor Beach. In 2004, Harbor Beach Lighthouse, deemed excess by the Coast Guard, was offered at no cost to eligible entities under the provisions of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000. The City of Harbor Beach submitted an application for the lighthouse and was recommended as the new owner, but the official transfer was delayed due to the State of Michigan requiring a bottomlands lease for any owner besides the federal government. The bottomlands agreement was too cumbersome for the city to accept, but after years of negotiations and threatened legal action, an acceptable agreement was finally worked out between the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the Michigan Lighthouse Alliance. During the 2010 Great Lakes Lighthouse Preservation Conference, ceremonies were held to transfer Harbor Beach Lighthouse to the City of Harbor Beach. The Harbor Beach Lighthouse Preservation Society, stewards of the light since the early 1980s, will continue to manage the lighthouse for the city.
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