The town of White Rock on Lake Huron between Port Sanilac and Harbor Beach has a very interesting story to tell. The town was named after a large white boulder that stood near the shoreline of Lake Huron, and by 1776 it was the largest village in the territory. It was used as a boundary marker for the northern point of the Treaty of Detroit with the Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot and Potawatomi Native American nations signed on November 17th 1807. In the 1830’s, the town was a thriving port, and in 1856 a lighthouse was built to safely guide ships into port. The community, along with the lighthouse, was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871. The great fire also occurred on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, and while Chicago was rebuilt, White Rock never grew to be the large town it once was, and the lighthouse was never rebuilt. In 1996 the privately owned White Rock Memorial lighthouse was built.
P.S. If I ever get the chance to build my own house, I would build a lighthouse, even if it was in the middle of a subdivision miles away from any lake.
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