Photo Credit: Courtesy of National Park Service | www.nps.gov
Far north of the shining city lights lies a place where the water is clear and bright. In this place is housed a beacon that has guided mariners safely home for more than a century.
However, after so many years, the structure itself needed its own assistance. In 2011, the lighthouse on South Manitou Island in Michigan underwent a restoration and exterior whitewashing that returned the building to its heyday.
A History Lesson
Located 8 miles northwest of the town of Glen Arbor, South Manitou is considered a part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. This area’s rich history dates to 1673 when the islands were first mapped by the French explorer Louis Joliet. In the early 1800s, sailed schooners transiting the Great Lakes used South Manitou as a means of navigation, but the island became most significant for fueling and feeding the steamboat crews transporting goods from the southernmost ports on Lake Michigan through the Straits of Mackinac to ports near Detroit.