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Category Archives: Lighthouses

The Old Lighthouse and the Big Green Bridge

Posted on March 12, 2025 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses .

The Mackinaw Point Lighthouse stands along the shore looking at the Big Green Bridge that connects Michgian’s two peninsulas. It rememds me of the childrens book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. Ships may use the bridge for navigation but the old brick lighthouse still stands as a loyal friend watching over the mighty bridge.

If you love lighthouses I hope you will take a look at my book Light From The Birdcage available on Amazon HERE 

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The Red Light of Sand Point Lighthouse

Posted on February 27, 2025 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses, upper peninsula .

The shipping season has ended for the winter on the Great lakes, and the ships are in winter layup, but the Sand Point Lighthouse still shines over Escanaba. The lighthouse has a red light, and from what I’ve learned, red is used because it shows up better in fog. I have also noticed that lighthouses at harbor entrances usually have a red light. Whatever the reason, the old lighthouse looks majestic and faithful, shining in the night sky.

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Only Choice Lighthouse

Posted on September 9, 2024 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses, upper peninsula .

Not far from US-2, near the town of Gulliver, between the “Bridge” and Escanaba, is Seul Choix Point Lighthouse. Seul Choix is a French word for “only choice” and is pronounced “sis shwa”. It is one of the few harbors along the southern shore of the Upper Peninsula. That is how the name of the lighthouse came to be. It is still used as an active aid for navigation but also serves as a museum for visitors.

Stories claim the lighthouse is haunted by keeper Joseph Willie Townsend, who served at the structure from 1902 until his death in 1910. It is said that he passed away while in the bedroom that is located upstairs. Townsend and his wife lived in the lighthouse, and he was known to enjoy smoking cigars. Unfortunately, his wife was not a huge fan of the smell and smoke associated with the cigars, and forbade him to smoke in the house. Since his death, many people have claimed to smell burning cigars in the house. It’s believed that Townsend purposely smokes in the house in the afterlife as his wife can no longer stop him from doing it. People also claim to have seen Townsend’s ghost and that furniture is rearranged. Another strange occurrence is that when the table is set for dinner with the forks facing up, if you leave to retrieve something and return to the table, sometimes the forks are facing down. Townsend was known to set his forks down in that position.

If you enjoy reading stories of lighthouses I hope you will take a look at my book Light From The Birdcage available on Amazon HERE

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The Hull and the Lighthouse

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses, Ships and Boats .

The decaying wooden hull of the Bernice D sits on the grounds of the Sturgeon Point Lighthouse. The 30 foot long wooden boat was built in 1915. It was a fishing boat powered by a gasoline engine. It was abandoned in 1981 and sits on display near the lighthouse. I wonder how many times the fisherman used the lighthouse as a guide while they were out on Lake Huron. Now the hull of the Bernice D sits in retirement under the watchful tower of the lighthouse.

If you love lighthouses I hope you will take a look at my lighthouse book HERE

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The Ice Fisherman’s Harrowing Ordeal

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses, people .

The tallest lighthouse on the Great Lakes is the White Shoal Lighthouse on the western end of the Straits of Mackinac. The tower was completed in 1910 and is 121 feet tall. During a winter storm in 1929, a fifty-four-year-old ice fisherman ended up at White Shoal Lighthouse seeking refuge. Lewis Sweet and a couple buddies came up from the Petoskey area to ice fish near Waugoshance Point. After each one of them cut a large hole in the ice, they set up their ice shanty and used spears to stab any trout that swam past. The prevailing wind blew from the west and kept the ice on Lake Michigan pushed up along the shoreline. The men knew that if the wind shifted to the east, it could drive the ice away from land. After fishing most of the day, the men noticed a storm off in the distance. The two other fishermen Sweet had been fishing with headed back for shore.

Lewis decided he wanted to fish for a few more minutes. After trying to spear one more trout, Lewis grabbed his trout and the axe he used for chopping a hole in the ice and headed back to shore. Lewis heard a thunderous sound echoing across the ice, and he knew instantly that the ice had cracked. He ran as fast as he could in the snow, but when he got to the crack, it was already too wide for him to jump across. He headed back toward his shanty as the snow began to fall. It came down so heavy that he was not able to see far and could not find his shanty. He knew he needed protection from the wind, so he built a wall from the hard packed snow and lay behind it to block the wind. He got up every few minutes and moved around to keep his body warm. He heard another crack and knew the large chuck of ice that kept him out of the freezing cold water was slowly breaking up.

He continued toward what he thought was the center of the ice floe and built another snow wall for shelter. He drifted on the disintegrating hunk of ice throughout the night. By the next morning, the ice had drifted into the twelve-story-tall White Shoal Lighthouse. The ladder used by the keepers to climb the twenty feet to the cribbing was covered in a thick coating of ice. Sweet used his axe to chop through the thick ice that had coated the ladder. He spent hours chopping, only to reveal about half of the ladder. He then got the idea to stack up the chunks of ice that had broken up when the flow slammed into the lighthouse. He finally made it to the base of the tower. The door was unlocked, and he took refuge in the relative safety of the lighthouse. Inside the lighthouse, Lewis found kerosene and a heater along with some food he could eat. He finally managed to get warmed up. His feet and hands were blistered and frostbitten from the cold. He could hear an airplane flying overhead. By the time he climbed the stairs on his injured feet to signal the plane, it was already out of sight. He had enough rations in the lighthouse to keep him alive for over a month, but he knew he needed to seek medical attention for his feet. After a few days, Lake Michigan had once again frozen over. He was not sure if he could make it back to shore, but Sweet took the chance anyways. He grabbed some rations for the trip, which included a can of condensed milk. He used a rope to lower himself down to the frozen surface of the lake.

In agony, he trekked across the ice back to land. He had managed to hike nearly twenty miles when he made landfall near Cross Village, where he found an old hunting cabin. He built a fire in the stove and found some leftover coffee and brewed himself a cup where he poured in some of his condensed milk. After drinking his coffee, he lay down to rest. He woke up to terrible pains in his stomach and wondered if the condensed milk had gone bad. He spent the next day recouping from whatever ailed him and finally was healthy enough to search for civilization. He hiked through the snow towards Cross Village, where some Native American girls spotted him stumbling out of the forest. Scared, the girls quickly ran home, and someone finally came out to get Lewis Sweet. He was taken by dog sled to the nearby town of Levering and then driven by car to the hospital in Petoskey. All of his toes were amputated and most of his fingers. He was in the hospital for ten weeks. Limited in what he could do for work, his story was published in a book with the proceeds going to support him and his family.

If you love lighthouses I hope you will take a look at my new Lighthouse book HERE

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The Lighthouse State

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses .

I enjoy traveling to other states and exploring new places for my Lost In The States website, but after a while I get homesick for Michigan. Coming around the bottom of Lake Michigan and heading into the Great Lakes State, it is a beautiful sight site to see the lighthouse at the welcome center along I-94 near New Buffalo.

Setting sail along the concrete and asphalt seas, it is comforting to have a lighthouse guiding travelers along their journey. In todays modern era of turn by turn navigation and GPS, the lighthouse stands as a reminder of days gone by, and a time when lighthouses and their keepers protected sailors and their ships from the perils of a rocky shoreline.

Michigan has more lighthouses than any other state in the Union. It is comforting to travel around the two peninsulas and you are never to far from one of these magnificent and historic beacons. Michigan is the Great Lakes State, but to me it is also the Lighthouse State.

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The Cheboygan Crib Light

Posted on September 18, 2023 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses .

cheboygan crib light

The Cheboygan Crib Light stands proudly at the mouth of the Cheboygan River, looking over the Straights of Mackinac, remembering the time it once stood out there in the open waters, guiding ships and sailors safely thru the straights.

The Light was originally built in Lake Huron in 1884 on a “crib”, (an artificial-island landfill) more than 2,000 feet from the Cheboygan shore. The Crib Light is called a “light” rather than a “lighthouse” because it did not contain a structure in which a keeper lived. The keeper lived in Cheboygan and he would take a boat daily to the crib, in all weather conditions, to maintain the kerosene-fired light. This was hazardous duty especially docking to the crib in heavy waves during a storm.

In 1903, the existing wooden structure was torn down to a depth of 12 inches (300 mm) into the water and a new sturdier concrete steel structure was erected. In 1906, the rebuilt light was severely damaged when a schooner hit it. In 1911 an automated fog bell was installed, sounding a characteristic single stroke every ten seconds.

cheboygan crib light

The Cheboygan Crib Light before it was moved to it current location at the mouth of the Cheboygan River

In 1920, the Lighthouse Service oversaw the automation of the Crib Light. In the Crib Light’s new incarnation, kerosene was no longer necessary; instead, a traveling crew periodically delivered tanks of the flammable gas acetylene. A reliable pilot light burned day and night. When the sunset, the resulting drop in temperature would open a precision valve and release a flow of acetylene against the pilot light, causing the light to shine. When last Lighthouse keeper left in 1929, the old light quickly degraded.

In the second half of the 20th century, the invention of radar and other electronic aids to navigation began to render many Great Lakes navigational light towers redundant. The Crib Light was considered by the Coast Guard to be “surplus” property. In 1984, the Crib Light tower was removed from its crib and placed on its current base located on the Gordon Turner Park pier head.

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The Solitude of Poe Reef Lighthouse

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses .

poe reef lighthouse

I can only imagine how lonely and isolated it must have been to be a Lighthouse keeper in northern Michigan, but for the crew at Poe Reef Lighthouse,  it must have been especially challenging.  In the fall they survived Michigan storms raging with the waves of Lake Huron splashing up the sides of the lighthouse. In early spring ice would pound on the concrete foundation violently shaking it.

In 1893 a lightship was anchored above the reef located at the east end of South Channel near  Bois Blanc Island east of Cheboygan.   In 1928 a concrete structure was built with a lighthouse on top of it replacing the lightship. The Poe lighthouse was originally painted all white, which sometimes confused mariners because they shared colors and a common structural design. Thus, a decision was made in 1957 to paint Poe in contrasting bands of black and white.

Poe Reef Lighthouse

Photo of the Poe Reef Lighthouse in the 1930’s from the U S Coast Guard archives

The Poe Reef station was designed so that the onsite crew could also remotely operate the Fourteen Foot Shoal Light. By 1974 both lights have were fully automated and the fog horn is still in service. In 1929, Poe Reef Lighthouse and Cape Henry Lighthouse became the first in the United States to be equipped with synchronized radiobeacons and fog signals. When these two signals are sent simultaneously, a mariner can note the time interval between the arrival of the radio signal and sound signal and calculate the vessel’s distance from the lighthouse. Poe Reef Lighthouse was operated by a five man crew and had four diesel engines, four gas-operated generators and an eight-foot long pane of radio instruments.

The reef and light are named for lighthouse designer Orlando M. Poe. During ten years of service as Engineer for the Eleventh Lighthouse District he designed eight lighthouses in Michigan and his”crowning achievement” is considered to be the Poe Lock in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

In 2005, the Poe Reef Light lighthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the parallel state inventory of historic sites

If your wondering, I took this pic from the shoreline of the Cheboygan State Park near the lighthouse ruins of the old lighthouse HERE

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The Keeper of the White River Lighthouse

Posted on February 24, 2023 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Haunted Places, Lighthouses .

William Robinson was appointed as the first keeper of the White River Lighthouse at the mouth of the White River North of Muskegon. After it was built in 1871 keeper Robinson and his wife Sarah moved into the little brick house where they raised their 13 children. William Robinson was the head keeper for 47 years and the Lighthouse board decided since he was 87 years old that the assistant keeper take over the duties of maintaining the lighthouse. Before Assistant keeper, William Bush, who was Robinson’s grandson officially became the head keeper, William peacefully died in the lighthouse that he loved and worked at for so many years. It is said that he and his wife’s spirit still remain at the lighthouse watching over it.  Now I am not sure if it’s haunted but while I was there walking around taking photos of the tan brick lighthouse It sounded like footsteps in the snow. I kept turning around expecting to see someone but no one was there. I think it was just the chunks of ice in the river bumping into each other from the waves but I have to admit it was a strange experience. The lighthouse was deactivated in the 60s and is now a museum.

 

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Port Sanilac Lighthouse

Posted on February 10, 2023 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Lighthouses, Thumb .

The town of Port Sanilac stands along Lake Huron at the intersection of M-46 and M-25. The lighthouse in town has been guiding ships in this harbor town since 1886. It has a unique tapered tower that flares out at the top. I read somewhere this was done to conserve bricks during construction. The lighthouse is privately owned but you can get a good view of it from the park next to it.

FYI: Lost in Michigan volume 1 is currently buy one get one 50% OFF on Amazon You can see it by clicking HERE.  It can be combined with several other products on sale including other Michigan books. You can see the other items on sale HERE

 

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