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    Lighthouses of Eastern Michigan
    Lighthouses of Eastern Michigan
    Lighthouses of Eastern Michigan
    Ebook189 pages58 minutes

    Lighthouses of Eastern Michigan

    By Wil O'Connell and Pat O'Connell

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    About this ebook

    From the Straits of Mackinac to the Detroit River, Images of America: Lighthouses of Eastern Michigan reveals intriguing stories of lighthouses and the people who depended on them. Readers will enjoy discovering what happened when a large ship fell 20 feet over one of the Soo Locks and the captain commented, Good-bye Old World, as well as of a persistent ghost that caused havoc with the Coast Guard. Which lighthouse was a construction miracle in 1874? And whatever happened to the lost lighthouses of the Detroit River? A collection of the mysteries, storms, fires, and heroics surrounding the lighthouses of eastern Michigan are waiting within.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 1, 2013
    ISBN9781439643099
    Lighthouses of Eastern Michigan
    Author

    Wil O'Connell

    Wil and Pat O�Connell have spent the last 20 years photographing and writing about the lighthouses of the Great Lakes, the Atlantic Coast, and Florida. Wil was raised in Cleveland and sailed the Great Lakes in his youth. As a child, Pat spent summers with her parents boating and fishing around the Lake Erie Islands and taking boat trips to the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Huron.

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      Book preview

      Lighthouses of Eastern Michigan - Wil O'Connell

      Publishing.

      INTRODUCTION

      Lighthouses and lightships were designed to save lives and vessels. This is a statement that reflects the power of the Great Lakes, as Michigan has more lighthouses than any other state in the country. Interspersed along the journey this book takes from the Straits of Mackinac and the Soo Locks, down Lake Huron, and into Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River are some harrowing experiences captains and sailors had traveling these waterways. They are stories of the struggle to save ships and crew members. The unleashed power of the Great Lakes, such as the force of a November storm in 1913 given the name White Hurricane, tested the value of using lighthouse beacons as a guide. The significance of these structures proved to be priceless to the men sailing the waters of eastern Michigan.

      Lighthouses were of importance to politicians and businessmen as well, who wanted to increase commerce and bring prosperity to Michigan cities and the state. As trade increased along Great Lakes waterways, ship owners and insurance companies interested in tamping down the amount of shipwrecks also became heavily involved with the development of lighthouses.

      This uptick in trade occurred in the 1800s, when the lumber and fishing industries in Michigan were becoming more viable. After iron ore was discovered in the mid-1850s in the upper Great Lakes and the first incarnation of the Soo Locks opened in 1855, ships slowly began to transport more iron ore to Detroit and other hubs. Enough was shipped to help make the steel that eventually became the backbone of the country’s infrastructure as well as later launch the auto industry. By the turn of the century, Michigan had become the land of opportunity; fortunes were made in the automotive, shipping, and steel industries. People migrated to the state to capitalize on the wealth of industrial work found in cities such as Detroit, Lansing, Flint, and Cadillac. As shipping increased, so did the need for lighthouses—they played a major role in the economic growth of Michigan.

      Rare images, some 100 to 150 years old and never seen before, depict these Michigan lighthouses, their keepers, and a lifestyle different from today’s reality. It was a simpler era, but one that could be extremely perilous given the situation. A good example is the Spectacle Reef Lighthouse, so isolated and dangerous that only bachelors, with their dogs, were allowed to serve as keepers. Blizzards and November gales constantly buffeted this lighthouse—among many in eastern Michigan—and tested a keeper’s confidence in the man-made structure built in 1874.

      During Prohibition, using lighthouse beacons to guide them, ordinary citizens made fortunes transporting booze from Canada to Detroit in boats, mostly at night. It was a cat-and-mouse game on both sides of the law throughout the region, with Detroit-area lighthouses bearing witness to more than their fair share of the era’s stories, documented in chapter eight, Secrets of Slightly Sinful Lighthouses.

      It is impossible to revisit all of the fascinating stories about the stalwart, brave people who developed eastern Michigan into an economic engine via Lake Huron and its tributaries—who plied its fickle waters, manned its lonely lighthouses, and sailed its risky lightships—but this book was written to salute all of them and their courage.

      Lighthouses: 1. Little Rapids Cut; 2. Round Island (St. Mary’s River); 3. Pipe Island; 4. Frying Pan Island; 5. DeTour Reef; 6. Martin Reef; 7. Spectacle Reef; 8. Round Island (Straits of Mackinac); 9. Round Island Passage; 10. Bois Blanc; 11. Cheboygan Main; 12. Cheboygan Crib; 13. Fourteen Foot Shoal; 14. Poe Reef; 15. Forty Mile Point; 16. Old and New Presque Isle; 17. Middle Island; 18. Alpena; 19. Thunder Bay Island; 20. Sturgeon Point; 21. Tawas Point; 22. Gravelly Shoal; 23. Saginaw Bay; 24. Port Austin Reef; 25. Pointe aux Barques; 26. Harbor Beach; 27. Port Sanilac; 28. Fort Gratiot; 29. Port Huron Lightship; 30. St. Clair Range and Ship Canal; 31. Harsens Island; 32. Lake St. Clair; 33. Belle Isle; 34. Livingston Memorial; 35. Mama Juda; 36. Peche Island Rear Range; 37. Windmill Point; 38. Grosse Ile North and South Channel and Front and Rear Range; 39. Grassy Island North and South Channel; 40. Detroit River; 41. Gibraltar; and 42. Monroe. (AC.)

      One

      THE SOO LOCKS AND

      THE STRAITS LIGHTHOUSES

      On June 9, 1909, the Crescent City, loaded with ore and down bound from Marquette on Lake Superior to Lake Huron and past the Round Island Light, pulled behind the steamer Assinibola, with 300 passengers, so both ships could go through the Sault Ste. Marie locks together.

      But something went wrong. The Perry G. Walker, below the lock and up bound, suddenly tore away from the pier, ramming and tearing one of the lower lock gates from its hinges. In an interview with a Cleveland Plains Dealer journalist, Capt. Frank Rice of the Crescent City explained:

      Instantly, 300 miles of pent-up Lake Superior water came rushing through the lock, turning it into a seething rapids, at the end of which was a 20 foot cataract [drop] where the lock gate had been. The first I knew of disaster was when the stern of the Assinibola in front of us reared out of the water, her nose down for the fateful plunge. We were being swept down toward her at a speed of 30 miles per hour, so that everything happened in a space of seconds. Closer and closer we came to the Assinibola. Then with a deafening crash, over the Assinibola went. Nearer and nearer the Crescent City bore down toward that same cataract, like a chip of wood on the bosom of the Niagara, a plaything of the Gods, and I and all of us, powerless to lift a finger

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