The name Presque Isle, French for “almost an island,” has been applied to a few Great Lakes peninsulas that are linked to the mainland by a narrow neck of land. Situated nineteen miles north of Alpena, Lake Huron’s Presque Isle helps form Presque Isle Harbor to the south and North Bay to the north. In 1837, Lieutenant G.J. Pendergrast was appointed by the Board of Navy Commissioners to select lighthouse sites that would yield a systematic arrangement of lights throughout the Great Lakes. After inspecting Presque Isle Harbor that year, Pendergrast reported: This is an excellent harbor, and ought to be provided with a light, to show vessels how to enter it in a stormy night. All the steam boats bound up or down the lake stop here for wood. The light, if erected, ought to be a colored one. On July 7, 1838, Congress appropriated $5,000 for a lighthouse at Presque Isle. That same summer, Lieutenant James T. Homans selected a point of land on the northeast side of the entrance to Presque Isle Harbor as the site for the lighthouse and indicated the spot by driving a stake and marking nearby trees. Homans noted that the harbor, being the only “safe haven on the route between Fort Gratiot and the Straits of Michilimackinac, a distance of 240 miles,” was frequented for shelter during storms by all classes of vessels on Lake Huron. Jeremiah Moors, who built Thunder Bay Island Lighthouse in 1832, was awarded the contract for Presque Isle Lighthouse on August 26, 1839. Built to guide vessels into the harbor and also serve those passing up and down Lake Huron, the lighthouse has walls of brick and stone that taper from a thickness of three-feet, two inches at the ground, where the diameter of the tower is twelve feet, to one feet, four inches, at the lantern room, where the diameter is six feet. The tower stands thirty-one feet tall, and stone stairs lead up to the lantern room where a revolving array of eleven lamps set in fourteen-inch reflectors produced a flashing light. A one-and-a-half-story, brick dwelling, measuring thirty-five by twenty feet, was built just north of the tower, and on September 23, 1840, Henry Woolsey was appointed the first keeper of Presque Isle Lighthouse at an annual salary of $350. Lemuel Crawford, an interim keeper, had kept the light from August 27, 1840 until Woolsey arrived at the lighthouse. A fourth-order Fresnel was installed atop the tower in 1857, changing the characteristic of the light to fixed white. In 1867, the Lighthouse Board noted that a new dwelling would be built at Presque Isle, but then the following year, it announced a change of plans. After due consideration of the subject, it was determined to recommend the removal of this light to a site about one mile north of the present one, so as to make it answer the purposes of a much needed coast light, instead of being a mere harbor light as it now is. Owing to the character of the entrance to the harbor, the light is of little value to guide vessels into it. If the removal of the light is made as contemplated, its power must be increased, which involves the necessity for an additional appropriation, which should also provide for the establishment of range lights to guide into the harbor. Range lights to better mark the course vessels needed to follow to safely enter the harbor were completed in August 1870, and the new coastal light went into service on the opening of navigation in 1871. No longer needed, the old Presque Isle Lighthouse was discontinued and its lantern room and lens removed for use elsewhere. Patrick Garrity, Sr., the last keeper of the lighthouse, moved his wife and five children just up the road to take charge of the new Presque Isle Lighthouse. The abandoned lighthouse was retained by the government for nearly three decades before being sold at public auction in 1897 to Edward O. Avery of Alpena.
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