STURGEON POINT LIGHTHOUSE-MICHIGAN

                                                                                                            Sturgeon Point lighthouse in 1904
                                                                                                      Photograph courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard

A lighthouse was built on Tawas Point near the northern entrance of Saginaw Bay, in 1857, and one was erected on Thunder Bay Island in 1832, but these lights were unable to fully illuminate the roughly fifty-five-mile gap between them. In 1866, the Lighthouse Board proposed that a lighthouse be erected near the midpoint of this gap. Congress appropriated the requested $15,000 on March 2, 1867, and efforts began to secure a title to the desired parcel on Sturgeon Point. Plans for the lighthouse were approved July 6, 1868, and after a deed for just over sixty acres on the point was formalized on September 22, 1868, work commenced the following spring. Excavation for the lighthouse was made at a location roughly 100 feet from the shoreline, and a limestone block foundation, which is seven-and-a-half feet high and extends four feet above the surface of the ground, was laid for a conical tower with attached keeper’s dwelling. The circular brick tower gently tapers from a diameter of sixteen feet at its base to ten feet at the lantern room gallery, while its walls decrease from a thickness of four-and-a-half feet to eighteen inches over the same distance. The tower stands seventy-feet, nine inches tall, and its decagonal, cast-iron lantern room, which came from a lighthouse in Oswego, New York, is reached by a spiral stairway with three landings that winds up the tower. Four windows, one facing each of the cardinal points of a compass, provide light for the tower’s interior. A third-and-a-half-order, Henry-Lepaute Fresnel lens was mounted atop a cast-iron pedestal in the lantern room to produce a fixed white light that could be seen for up to fifteen miles. An eleven-foot-long covered passageway connects the tower to the two-story, brick dwelling, which had eight rooms for the keeper and his family. An iron door was installed at the entrance to the tower from the passageway to prevent fire from spreading between the tower and dwelling, both of which were painted white. The lighthouse was completed in early November 1870, and its light was scheduled to be exhibited that month. However, Perley Silverthorn, the first keeper, was late in arriving to the lighthouse, and it was decided to postpone the inaugural lighting until the opening of navigation the following spring. The tower’s Fresnel lens was somehow damaged in 1887. A news lens was installed in the tower, and the old lens was shipped to the general lighthouse depot on Staten Island for repair. Whether or not the original third-and-a-half-order, Henry-Lepaute lens was ever returned to the lighthouse, it is known that a lens of that description was in the lantern room in 1910 and remains there today. In 1893, a brick-lined circular iron oil house, with a capacity of seventy-two, five-gallon oil cans was built 100 feet south of the lighthouse. Also that year, a brick cistern was added beneath the dwelling’s living room, and the conductor pipes from the residence were redirected to feed the cistern. On April 15, 1913, the characteristic of the light was changed from fixed white to a white flash every three seconds through the introduction of an automated acetylene lighting apparatus. Louis Cardy was hired as keeper of the lighthouse in 1882, and he served for thirty-two years until his passing in November 1913 at the age of eighty-one. With the light now automated, a new keeper was not appointed. Rather, the coastguardsmen at the adjacent station were assigned to keep an eye on the light. Sturgeon Point Lighthouse had fallen into serious disrepair by the time the Alcona Historical Society obtained a lease on the property in 1982. The station’s buildings were restored as part of a three-year volunteer project, and they are now run as a maritime museum and historical site.

TAWAS POINT LIGHTHOUSE-MICHIGAN

                                                                                                                           Tawas Point Lighthouse in 1913
                                                                                                                  Photograph courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard

On March 3, 1875, Congress appropriated $30,000 for a “light-house on Ottawa Point, or for range to guide into Tawas Bay, on the northeast shore of Saginaw Bay, to be known as Tawas Light.” The Lighthouse Board decided to build the new lighthouse on a shoal, south of Tawas Point, in four feet of water. Work on the tower and dwelling began on August 12, 1876 and was finished by the end of the year. During the winter, the Fresnel lens was transferred from the old tower to the new tower, and the light was exhibited from the new lighthouse on the opening of navigation in 1877. The new, conical tower measured sixty-seven feet, three inches, from its base to the ventilator ball atop its decagonal lantern room, and its diameter tapered from sixteen feet to nine feet, eight inches. Connected to the tower by a covered passageway was a redbrick, two-story dwelling that had eight rooms for the keeper and his family. In September 1884, a crib protection, 130 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 4 feet high, was added to the northwest corner of the lighthouse’s existing cribwork and filled with stone and brick cannibalized from the old lighthouse. Additional cribwork protection was added the following year to the north and southwest sides of the station. All the necessary timber for the work was obtained on the nearby beach, and the fill was again from the old lighthouse, so the only expense for the Lighthouse Service was labor. On September 1, 1891, a new fourth-order, Sautter, Lemmonier, & Cie. Fresnel lens was installed in place of the old fifth-order lens, increasing the power of the light and changing its characteristic to twenty-five seconds of white light, followed by a five-second eclipse. The eclipse was produced by a hood around the lamp that was raised and lowered by a clockwork mechanism. Work on adding a fog signal to the station began in June 1899, when foundation trenches were dug and footings were laid five-eighths of a mile southwest of the lighthouse – clearly, the point had continued to grow since the completion of the lighthouse twenty-three years earlier. A brick fog signal building, measuring forty-two by twenty-two feet and equipped with a cement floor and a hipped roof, was built to house a ten-inch steam whistle, which was ready for operation on September 28, 1899. The fog signal building was surrounded by a cribbing of logs and linked to the lighthouse by a telephone system, a boardwalk, and a tramway. As it owned over seventy acres on Tawas Point, the Lighthouse Service decided to launch a reforestation project on the reservation to produce timber for construction. Roughly 20,000 Norway pines were planted in October 1927 on a thirteen-acre parcel. Trees planted behind hillocks of sand or in beach grass fared much better than those fully exposed to the wind coming off the lake. By the end of 1922, the surviving trees were between two and three feet in height, and the project was deemed “undoubtedly a success." On May 22, 1915, the intensity of Tawas Point Light was increased through the introduction of an incandescent oil vapor lamp. An air diaphone, powered by oil-engine-driven air compressors, took the place of the steam whistle on October 27, 1928. Tawas Point Lighthouse was staffed until 1953, when Leon DeRosia, who had been keeper at the station for six years, accepted a transfer to Grays Reef on Lake Michigan.

POINTE AUX BARQUES LIGHTHOUSE-MICHIGAN

                                                                                       Point Aux Barques lighthouse in 1904
                                                                                    Photograph courtesy of National Archives

The extreme northeast tip of Michigan's "thumb" is named Point aux Barques, French for Point of the Little Ships. This rocky cape marks the transition between Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay, and was a critical point for mariners. Congress appropriated $5,000 for a lighthouse on Pointe aux Barque on March 3, 1847. During 1847, a sixty-five-foot tower was constructed and equipped with nine lamps set in fourteen-inch reflectors to produce a fixed white light. Peter L. Shook was appointed first keeper of the lighthouse on March 3, 1848 and likely placed the light in operation at the opening of navigation that year. A new lighthouse, linked to a dwelling by a covered passageway, was built at Pointe aux Barques in 1857 by Alanson Sweet, Luzene Ransom, and Morgan Shinn, who were awarded contracts to rebuild several stations in Michigan around this time. The new tower, built of yellow brick, stood seventy-nine feet tall and had a focal plane of eighty-eight feet above the surrounding water. Its decagonal lantern room housed a third-order lens that, with the opening of navigation in the spring of 1858, exhibited a fixed white light varied every two minutes by a flash. The one-and-a-half-story keeper’s dwelling, also built using yellow brick, measured twenty-seven by twenty-nine feet with an attached twelve-by-fifteen-foot kitchen.  In 1867, the third-order Fresnel lens from Pointe aux Barques was exchanged for the fixed, third-order lens in use at Fort Gratiot Lighthouse. Due to the number of lights exhibited at the railway depot and other buildings near Fort Gratiot Lighthouse, the Lighthouse Board felt it needed a flashing characteristic to make it more visible to mariners. A third-order Henry-Lepaute Frensel lens was installed in Pointe Aux Barques Lighthouse in 1873 to give the light a characteristic of a white flash every ten seconds. On June 28, 1914, the light’s illuminant was changed from oil to incandescent oil vapor, increasing the intensity of the light to 38,000 candlepower. The light was electrified in 1932, further increasing its intensity to 120,000 candlepower. The Henry-Lepaute third-order Fresnel lens was removed from Pointe Aux Barques Lighthouse in 1969, when a modern optic was installed in the tower.

HARBOR BEACH LIGHTHOUSE-HARBOR BEACH, MICHIGAN

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.

PORT SANILAC LIGHTHOUSE-PORT SANILAC, MICHIGAN

LITTLE TRAVERSE LIGHTHOUSE-HARBOR SPRINGS, MICHIGAN

Located in the northeast corner of Lake Michigan are two expansive bays: Grand Traverse Bay and Little Traverse Bay. Grand Traverse Lighthouse commenced operation in 1852 to mark the entrance to Grand Traverse Bay, but Little Traverse Bay remained without a lighthouse for several more years. On the north shore of Little Traverse Bay, Harbor Point extends out into the bay for nearly a mile, forming a fine natural harbor at Harbor Springs.  On March 13,1871 the Michigan Legislature passed a resolution asking Congress for an appropriation for a lighthouse and fog bell for Little Traverse Bay. The U.S. Senate's Committee on Commerce asked the Lighthouse Board to investigate the necessity of the lighthouse, and the district's engineer, Orlando M. Poe, was tasked with making a formal report. A report which supported the need for such lighthouse. It took over a decade, but Congress finally appropriated $15,000 for the lighthouse on August 7, 1882. After title to the desired parcel on Harbor Point was acquired, materials and workers were landed at the site on May 14, 1884. By the end of June, the twenty-inch-thick stone foundation walls were in place, the first-floor joists were laid, and the brickwork had been carried up to a height of two feet. The red-brick lighthouse, consisting of an eight-and-a-half-foot-square tower attached to the southern end of a one-and-half-story dwelling, was completed on September 18, and the light was exhibited for the first time on September 25, 1884. A fourth-order L. Sautter, Lemonier & Co. Fresnel lens, installed in the tower’s decagonal, cast-iron lantern room, was used to beam forth a fixed red light at a focal plane of forty-one feet above the bay. In 1887, a forty-five-foot-deep, two-inch drive well was sunk near the dwelling to provide water via a hand pump. Four years later, the station was connected to the city’s main, which provided a steady supply of water for domestic purposes and for protection against fire. A summer kitchen was added to the lighthouse in 1894.  Though a fog bell was mentioned in the original plans for the station, only a light was available to mariners until 1896, when a two-story, square, pyramidal, fog-bell tower, resting atop five brick piers, was erected. The lower portion of the tower was enclosed, and the 1,800-pound bell was hung in the open upper portion. Starting on June 1, 1896, the bell was struck a double blow every thirty seconds when needed. Prior to being installed at Little Traverse Lighthouse, the bell and striking mechanism had been used at Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Accretion gradually built up Harbor Point until the lighthouse was situated a significant distance from the entrance to the harbor. On July 28, 1959, the commander of the Ninth Coast Guard District held a public hearing to receive feedback on the plan to discontinue Little Traverse Lighthouse and its fog bell and establish an automated light on a skeletal tower near the extremity of the point. When no adverse comments were received, the Coast Guard requested that the General Services Administration exchange the lighthouse property for a fifty-foot-square parcel owned by the Harbor Point Association, who had agreed to pay for the difference in property value in cash. After the transaction was completed, a forty-one-foot-tall skeletal tower was erected on the point in 1963 to display an automated flashing green light.  As Harbor Point remains an exclusive gated community controlled by the Harbor Point Association, the best public views of the lighthouse are from the water since access is not granted to the general public.

 

        Little Traverse Lighthouse with bell tower.      

Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

 

 

MISSION POINT LIGHTHOUSE-MICHIGAN

In October 1863, a committee, assigned by the Lighthouse Board to visit potential sites for lighthouses along the Great Lakes and in New England, recommended that a lighthouse be built at the tip of Old Mission Peninsula to guide maritime traffic in Grand Traverse Bay. Congress appropriated $6,000 for a lighthouse at the northern tip of the peninsula on March 3, 1859, but land for the structure was not purchased until 1869, due, in part, to the intervening Civil War. Construction was carried out during 1870, and the lighthouse was lit for the first time on September 10 of that year by Jerome M. Pratt, who had previously served as keeper of Skillagalee Lighthouse. Mission Point Lighthouse consists of a one-and-a-half-story frame dwelling, measuring thirty by twenty-eight feet, with a square tower protruding from its lakeward gable. The center of the lantern room is thirty-five feet above the ground, but the bluff on which the lighthouse stands gave the fixed white light, produced by the tower’s fifth-order Fresnel lens, a focal plane of forty-eight feet above the bay.  Over the years, a few additions were made to the lighthouse. In 1889, a 200-foot-long and 4-foot-high crib was built and filled with stone to protect the shore in front of the lighthouse. That same year, a brick cistern was built, and a pump was placed in the kitchen to draw the water. A new woodshed was put up in 1894, and in 1898, a brick oil house was added to store the volatile kerosene, which was being used as the illuminant at that time. In 1911, a bell buoy, painted with red and black horizontal stripes, was established off Mission Point to mark the northern end of the shoals that extend from the peninsula. Though its importance had been reduced, Mission Point Lighthouse continued to be staffed until June 30, 1933, when Emil C. Johnson, its last keeper, left. In 1938, the offshore bell buoy, which by then was lit, was replaced by a new structure known as Mission Point Light. The structure is a circular black cylinder of interlocking steel sheet piling filled with stone and capped with concrete. On the pier thus provided is erected a skeleton steel tower and small steel house elevated above the pier deck on four circular cylinders for protection from ice and wave action. The light is a 200 m.m. lantern fitted with a battery operated electric light showing a white flash of 330 c.p., 1 second duration every 10 seconds. The steel skeletal tower atop the circular pier has since been replaced by a cylindrical tower.