Sand Point lighthouse with acetylene light that replaced it in 1922
Congress provided $10,000 for a lighthouse at L’Anse on March 3, 1873, but it wasn’t until May 1876 that a deed to a parcel on Sand Point, situated on the opposite side of the bay from the Village of L’Anse, was obtained. Work at the site commenced on August 1877, using plans that called for a rectangular, one-and-a-half-story dwelling with an eight-and-a-half-foot-square tower centered in its lakeward-facing gable. The lighthouse was built of red brick, with the wooden stairs in the tower provided access to the lantern room and to both floors of the five-room dwelling. Nearly identical lighthouses were built at Sherwood Point in 1883 and at Little Traverse in 1884. The tower at Sand Point measures thirty-six-and-a-half feet from base to ventilator ball, and its octagonal lantern features a wooden lower part, a cast-iron upper part, and a copper and zinc roof. A wooden door in the lantern room provides access to the gallery, which is encircled by a wooden balustrade. A lamp with a ruby red chimney was used inside a fifth-order Fresnel lens, manufactured by L. Sautter & Co. in France, to produce a fixed red light at a focal plane of thirty-nine feet above the bay. John B. Crebassa exhibited the light from Sand Point Lighthouse for the first time on August 10, 1878. Keeper Crebassa was born in 1839 to Peter Crebassa, the town father of L’Anse, and his Indian wife Nancy, and served as keeper of Portage River Lighthouse for thirteen years before being transferred to Sand Point. In 1894, some eight feet of sidewalk were laid to link the dwelling with the station’s outhouse and boathouse. Sand Point Lighthouse was jacked up in 1897 and moved back 200 feet from the shoreline no account of erosion. A wall of hemlock timber was then placed around the lighthouse, and the intervening space was filled with sand. Richard Thompson, the fourth keeper of the light, served from 1911 until 1922, when an acetylene light was established atop a pipe mast rising above a small redbrick tank house, situated thirty-seven yards east of the lighthouse. The new light had a focal plane of thirty-five feet and produced a white flash every three seconds. No longer needed, Sand Point Lighthouse was sold off, and one of its owners added the enclosed porch on the south side of the structure. Louis Guy, a local dentist, was one of the lighthouse's private owners. The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community purchased the lighthouse and surrounding property in 1994 and has since used the building for offices. The current light at Sand Point, a white flash every four seconds, is displayed from a square, skeletal tower on the point.
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