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| Manistique East Breakwater Light | Seeing The Light |
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Historical
Information
In order to protect the mouth of the river from silting, the lumber interests erected a pair of short timber crib piers at the river mouth in the late 1870's and maintained lens lanterns suspended from poles at their outer ends to assist captains making their way into the harbor.
By the turn of the century the population of Manistique had grown to 3,500, with the mills employing 1,200 men, boasting a combined capital of $1,300,000, and producing 80,000,000 board feet of white pine a year. Additionally, prosperous new businesses had joined the lumber interests along the lower five miles of the river, notable among which was the Manistique Iron Company, which was shipping 100 tons of pig iron a day. After establishing the Traverse City, Leelanau & Manistique Railroad in 1901, which ran between Northport to Traverse City, Weston launched the 338-foot car ferry MANISTIQUE MARQUETTE AND NORTHERN No. 1 in December 1902, and began daily railcar and mail service between Manistique and Northport soon thereafter. These were boom times for Manistique, and while the federal government had undertaken a string of significant harbor improvements throughout Lake Michigan since the 1850's, the entry to the Manistique had somehow been overlooked. Forced to provide for themselves, Manistique business interests had extended the timber crib piers to 1,600 feet in length, and barely managed to maintain a depth of 11 feet in the 350-foot opening between the piers.
The contract for the construction of the breakwaters was awarded to the Greiling Brothers Company out of Sturgeon Bay, who had established a solid reputation for harbor work in a number of ports around Lake Michigan. With construction well underway in 1910, George Putnam, the newly appointed Commissioner of lighthouses, made the following observations in his annual report to Congress: "car ferries between Frankfort and Manistique run the year round; during the winter months this run, taking into consideration the nature of the cargo carried and the dangers from ice is extremely hazardous; it is therefore believed that every facility should be afforded for safe navigation into this port, It is proposed to establish range lights with fog signal and quarters for keepers." To this end, the report included a request for $20,000 for the erection of the recommended navigation aids, as follows: For two towers and fog-signal buildings $7,000, illuminating apparatus $2,500, for fog signal apparatus $1,500, $7,500 for a duplex dwelling and $1,500 to cover contingencies.
Congress responded with the requested $20,000 for permanent aids on October 22, 1913. Contracts were awarded for supplying the necessary structural and mechanical components for the new west breakwater that winter, and negotiations were undertaken for the purchase of a site for the dwelling close to the foot of the new East Breakwater.
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Realizing the vast profit potential to
be made in satiating Chicago's need for lumber after the great fire, and
the natural delivery system represented by the Manistique watershed,
Abijah Weston and his associates arrived in Manistique in 1872 ready to
reap the bounty of the areas seemingly limitless forest. Within a year,
the river mouth served as the receiving point for millions of logs
floated down the river from remote wilderness camps, and the twin
sawmills of the Chicago Lumbering Company and the Weston Lumber Company
were working overtime to serve the endless parade of lumber hookers and
schooners tied-up at the lumber-stacked wharves, waiting to carry their
cargoes to the bustling cities growing at the foot of the lake.
Seeing the potential for a rail line
connecting Manistique to lake Superior, Weston formed the Manistique and
Northwestern Railway Company in 1891 with the lines northern terminus at
Negaunee. With an expected increase in maritime traffic entering the
river, Ninth Lighthouse District Engineer Major Milton B. Adams
requested an appropriation of $32,000 for the establishment of a coast
light and fog signal at the harbor entrance in his annual report for
1892. While the act of February 15, 1893 gave Congressional approval to
the project, no appropriation was forthcoming, and without funding, the
project was stalled. Although the Lighthouse Board reiterated the
request for the following three years, the matter was dropped by the
Board in its annual reports after 1895.
Applying all possible political
pressure, the city fathers of Manistique finally managed to convince the
Federal government of both the financial importance the businesses on
the river represented, and the need to ensure safe entry to the
increasingly larger vessels now plying the lakes. An 
As work on the breakwaters progressed
through 1912, the Lighthouse Service erected temporary rage lights on
the east pier. Both lights were incandescent electric type, and powered
by the city electrical utility. The front range consisted of simple pole
with a 170 candlepower fixed white lens lantern suspended 25 feet above
lake level, and visible for a distance of 11 miles. The rear range, of
similar construction stood 50 feet above the water, and emitted 45
candlepower, and created a visible range of 7 miles.
With the Greilling Brothers completion
of the west breakwater in the summer of 1914, lighthouse crews began
simultaneous construction of permanent lights on both the West
Breakwater and West pierhead. The West Breakwater structure took the
form of a white skeleton steel tower erected on a concrete pedestal atop
the surface of the concrete breakwater. Designed to operate as an
unmanned aid, the acetylene powered lens lantern was equipped with a sun
valve and flasher, to provide a characteristic 0.3 second flash every 3
seconds. By virtue of its location at a focal plane of 36 feet, the
120-candlepower white light was visible for a distance of 10 miles in
clear weather. To guide vessels round the West Pierhead, a simple white
post lantern was erected on outer end of the old timber pier. Standing
26 feet above lake level, the 60-candlepower acetylene light was visible
8 miles, and received its acetylene from tanks stored in a small wooden
building located beside the pole. Construction of the planned lighting
of the west side of the harbor entrance was thus complete, and the two
new lights were exhibited for the first time on the evening of October
30, 1914.
The Greilling Brothers completed work
on the new East Breakwater late in 1915, and a lighthouse crew arrived
to pour a large concrete slab 36 feet from the outer end of the
structure to serve as a foundation for the planned combination light
tower and fog signal building. The following year, while one crew worked
on building the station's duplex dwelling, another crew worked on
erecting the lighthouse tower at the end of the East Breakwater. Shipped
to the site in disassembled form, the tower was made of prefabricated
steel plates which were bolted together and lagged to the foundation.
Square in plan, the tower stood approximately 38 feet tall, and was
surmounted by a square gallery upon which a decagonal cast iron lantern
housed an electrically powered fixed red 
Over the ensuing fifty years,
Manistique's prominence lumbering port waned. With cessation of
Manistique and Lake Superior railroad operations, and the departure of
the last Ann Arbor car ferry from the harbor on July 18, 1968, the
harbors prominence plummeted. With advances in LORAN and Radar, manned
lights were no longer considered a necessity to navigation, and the
Manistique light was automated the following year, and the keeper's
dwelling sold into private ownership. As part of automation, the Fourth
Order Fresnel lens was removed and replaced by a 300 mm Tidelands Signal
acrylic optic. The Fourth Order lens was placed in storage, and
eventually restored and loaned to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in
Manitowoc.
Unfortunately, Manistique's long
history of lumbering and industrialization has not been without penalty.
Contamination of the river life was initially noticed in the 1950's,
with PCB's and heavy metals found in the river sediment in the 1970's.
As a result, the site was designated as an official EPA "Area of
concern." The sources of this contamination were found to be
"wastes from the old sawmills, a paper mill, small industries,
residences, the municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant, and sandy
sediments which eroded from river banks as a result of log drives on the
river." As a result of a concerted clean-up effort over the past
twenty years, the middle and upper reaches of the Manistique River are
much cleaner now than they were 100 years ago. There is recreational
boating at the Marina and Harbor of Refuge, and a scenic 2.5 mile-long
boardwalk has been constructed along the river.