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| Michigan Island Old Light | Seeing The Light |
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Historical Information
Captains making for La Pointe from the east were forced to thread the needle through the narrow South Channel between Long Island and the southerly tip of Madeline Island, before swinging northwest into more open water, and thence to the harbor at LaPointe. Vessels wishing to avoid the South Channel by swinging around the northerly end of Madeline Island were forced instead to negotiate between the Madeline coast and Michigan, Stockton, and Basswood Islands before swinging south to LaPointe. Given the choice, almost all captains chose the route through the South Channel, since it was a considerably shorter distance. Shorter distances meant less time, and even in the mid nineteenth century commercial captains were only too aware of the fact that time was money. While making the passage through the South Channel under sail was difficult under the best of conditions, without the benefit of a light to mark the westerly tip of Long Island, the task was formidable under darkness or in thick weather of any kind.
Apostle Island Cruise Services may be contacted at the following address: P.O. Box 691 - City
Dock For information on the Keeper
Of The Light Celebration, contact: |
Commerce on Lake Superior at the middle of the
nineteenth century was very different than it is today, and
while the discovery of iron ore in the Missabe Range would soon cause
the twin ports of Duluth & Superior to assume the role of Superior's preeminent
ports, in 1850 the
bustling fur trading center at La Pointe on Madeline Island served as
the lake's hub of maritime commerce. Although the harbor at LaPointe was
protected from deadly Superior Nor'westers by its situation in the lee of
the Apostle Islands, and from Northeasterly blows by the body if
Madeline Island itself, entry into the harbor was no simple task from
any direction.
Taking up the cause of maritime
interests on February 8, 1851, Wisconsin Senator Orasmus Cole presented
a memorial before Congress on behalf of the Wisconsin Legislature
praying "for an appropriation to build a light-house at La Pointe,
on the southern shore of Lake Superior." On March 3, 1853, Congress
appropriated $5,000 for the construction of the LaPointe light, and in
his annual report for that same year, Eleventh District Inspector
Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves reported that plans for the station had been
drawn up, a site had been selected, steps were underway to obtain title
for the reservation, and directions would be given for getting the work
underway. Uncharacteristically, no mention was made of the exact
location chosen for the new station.
Milwaukee builders Sweet, Ranson, and
Shinn were awarded the contract for building the LaPointe Light and a
number of other stations on Superior in 1854. However, there was
evidently some contention with the contract that required settlement
before work could begin, since Sitgreaves reported that "Owing to
the late day at which the sanction of the board to the contract was
obtained, the light-houses on Lake Superior have not yet been
commenced." The annual report for the following year indicated only
that work on the Light had begun, and the 1856 report stated merely that
the work was "in progress." The station was completed late in
1856, and consisted of a small whitewashed stone 1½ story keepers
dwelling with an attached stone tower standing 64-feet tall, and capped
with an octagonal cast-iron lantern. On completion, the contractors were
required to submit the structure to the district inspector for his
approval, and in the 1857 annual report it was stated that acceptance of
the station was refused, due to the fact that it was "not built in
conformity to the terms of the contract."
While the specific grounds for its
rejection were never clarified, ten years later in the 1867 Lighthouse
Board annual report, an "out of the blue" reference speaks of
the desire to re-establish a light station on Michigan Island which was
"discontinued in 1857." Since no mention of a lighthouse on
Michigan Island is made in any annual reports or Light Lists prior to
1857, and Light Lists after 1867 state that the station was built in
1857, it appears likely that Sweet, Ranson and Shinn built the 
While the specific reasons behind the
construction of the Light on Michigan Island remain to be discovered,
Lighthouse Board annual reports and Light Lists both indicate that the
LaPointe light, consisting of a small wooden keepers dwelling with
integrated roof-mounted tower was finally built on the southwestern tip
of Long Island in 1858, and the Michigan Island light remained unmanned
and abandoned for ten years.
By the mid 1860's vessel traffic in and
out of LaPointe waned, with the major east-west shipping lanes moving
just to the north off the Apostles. Determining that a light at the
northeastern end of the islands would serve as a valuable guide to
westbound mariners, in 1867 the Lighthouse Board determined that
reactivating the old Michigan Island Light would serve as an inexpensive
solution. Since the old station had been sitting inactive and unmanned
for ten years, it had suffered considerable deterioration as a result of
its exposure to the elements and lack of maintenance. Thus the Board
recommended that an appropriation of $6,000 be made to refurbish the
buildings, install a new lens and reactivate the light. Congress
appropriated the requested funds on July 20, 1868, and the Board
dispatched a crew to the island to begin refurbishing the station the
following year. Roswell H Pendergast was appointed as the station's
first keeper, and he arrived to assume his responsibilities on June 10.
The district lampist lantern was dispatched to the island to install a
Third-and-a-half Order Fresnel lens, which Pendergast exhibited for the
first time on the night of September 15, 1869.
Day to day live at the station remained
fairly uneventful for the next thirty years. As a result of receding
water levels, the boat house was moved 45 feet nearer to the water in
1884, and leaks in the lantern roof were causing enough of a problem
that a tin hood was installed over the lantern to protect it from water
dripping from holes in the roof. Fortunately keeper John Pasque managed
to escape injury in 1889 when the lantern was struck by lightning, and
the lightning bolt carried down the spiral cast iron stairs before
scattering across the concrete floor at the base of the tower. The
446-foot wooden walk and stairway leading from the boat landing at the
bottom of the cliff to the station above, was rebuilt, and a brick oil
storage building was built 75-feet from the dwelling the following year.
Evidently, winter ice was causing havoc to the landing cribs since the
lighthouse tender Amaranth brought a work crew to the island in 1897 to
completely rebuild them, and the returned five years later in 1902 to
rebuild them yet again, along with building a new barn for storage.
By the turn of the twentieth century,
maritime traffic patterns had shifted, with increasingly heavy traffic moving between the
Soo locks and the ore docks at Duluth/Superior and Ashland. As such, the
Michigan Island light station became increasingly important as both a
marker for vessels coasting to the north of the Apostles and as a turning point south into the docks at
Ashland. To better serve this traffic the Lighthouse Board began to
formulate a plan to replace the old Light with a new and improved
structure and a first-class fog signal. While the 