Copper Harbor Light Station, Copper Harbor Michigan

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The original Copper Harbor Light was built in 1848 and put into operation in 1849 when Copper Harbor was an important entry and shipping point for the emergent copper mining industry in this part of the Keweenaw Peninsula.

The discovery of copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula in the 1840s brought a mining boom to the area. No roads led into this wilderness. The only access was by water, and Copper Harbor with its good water harbor offered the closest access for men, equipment, and supplies to the new mines opening nearby. But the coast was rockbound and subject to adverse weather conditions and the harbor entrance channel was hard to locate, very narrow, and hemmed in by dangerous reefs. Requests for a lighthouse to mark the harbor entrance led to Congressional approval for a light on March 3^rd, 1847. Within a month the Michigan state legislature ceded jurisdiction of ten acres of land on a point on the east side of the harbor entrance to the federal government for a lighthouse for Copper Harbor. On April 3^rd, 1847, Congress appropriated $5,000 to build the lighthouse. Copper Harbor was one of three light stations for Lake Superior Congress authorized at about the same time in 1847-48. Stations at Whitefish Point and Manitou Island, Michigan, were built in 1848 and 1849. These were the first of many light stations established on Lake Superior's south shore in Michigan during the next decade. By 1860 nine more lights were in operation, including ones at nearby Eagle Harbor and Eagle River that also served the Keweenaw copper mines and mining communities.

In 1848 Charles Rude was awarded the contract to build the Copper Harbor Light Station structures for $4,800. He began work in August of 1848 and finished constructing the tower, a separate keeper's dwelling, and a dock by the end of the shipping season of 1848. The lighthouse went into service in the spring of 1849 at the start of the shipping season. The 1848 structures were not built to government specifications, and an 1858 inspection done for the Light-House Board discovered inadequacies. By 1863 the inspector for the Eleventh (Lake Superior) Light-House District recommended either significant repairs to the 1848 structures or new buildings.

According to the 1858 inspection report, the original 1848 tower was a forty-four-foot tall, white, conical split stone tower that had a base diameter of thirteen feet and an eight-foot six-inch diameter at the parapet. A wooden spiral staircase led to the stone lantern floor that supported an iron, octagon-shaped lantern room measuring ten feet six inches tall. A 6^th Order Fresnel lens was then the illuminating apparatus and had a fixed white light with a 215-degree arc. The separate 1848 stone keeper's dwelling contained four rooms plus a kitchen in the ell and had a shingle roof and a wood stove. There was no cistern or well at the site.

An 1863 inspection of Copper Harbor Light Station recommended a new light and dwelling be built to replace the 1848 structures. In 1866 Congress appropriated $13,600 to construct a new lighthouse at Copper Harbor. The new lighthouse combined the tower and dwelling into one structure in a "schoolhouse" form commonly used by the Light-House Service in the middle and late nineteenth century. The same design was also used at Grand Island and Marquette, other Upper Peninsula stations on Lake Superior. The new lighthouse was constructed seventy-seven feet east of the 1848 light tower on a higher point of land. Stone from the old tower was reused as the foundation for the new lighthouse/keeper's dwelling and a privy built at the same time. The polygonal lantern room initially held a 4^th Order Fresnel lens that was later replaced by a 4^th Order Hains lens (1910 lighthouse inspection report) that produced a fixed white light.

By the 1880s copper mining activity in the Keweenaw region was shifting southwestward to the Houghton-Calumet area where rich new deposits were being opened. Mines in the Copper Harbor area, some of the earliest opened in the region, were no longer important producers. The village of Copper Harbor, once a key entry and shipping point for the region, had entered into a long decline, with a great decrease in the number of ship arrivals and sailings.

On October 6^th, 1883, the Copper Harbor Light was taken out of operation and the buildings and grounds were placed under the charge of the Copper Harbor Range Lightkeeper. The illuminating apparatus was removed and reassigned to another light. However, after many complaints the Copper Harbor Light was relit in June of 1888 and a new 4^th Order Hains lens was installed.

In 1892 a small boathouse was built by the keeper and 200 feet of sidewalk was laid from the shoreline to the lighthouse. In 1895 a boat landing was built and it was noted that a barbed wire fence had been strung across the point of the lighthouse reservation. In the 1903 Annual Report of the Light-House Board, it was noted that the old 1848 keeper's dwelling had been repaired and was now used as a storeroom, oil house, and barn for the light station. The 1907 Annual Report of the Light-House Board indicated a new boathouse had been built and the old boat landing replaced with a new landing built of logs, with stone fill, and decked.

In 1919 the light was automated, using acetylene gas for power. The station had no resident keeper after that. At that time the light's characteristic was changed from a fixed white to a flashing white pattern.

In 1933 a new sixty-foot steel lighthouse tower, with concrete footings and foundation, was erected seventy-seven feet west of the 1866 lighthouse, almost at the exact location of the 1848 tower. New concrete sidewalks were installed at the same time.

In 1953 the U. S. Coast Guard declared the Copper Harbor Light Station surplus to its needs. In June 1955 all structures and the 46.15-acre property were put up for sale. The Coast Guard elected to retain 1.1 acres of land on the tip of the point which included the 1933 steel tower. On January 28^th, 1957, the State of Michigan purchased the light station and land for $5,000 dollars. Over the years the lighthouse structures were sandblasted to remove exterior white paint and repairs were made to the bricks on the chimneys and a new metal roof was installed on the 1866 lighthouse/keeper's dwelling structure. Interior repairs since then have included the replacement of floor joists, stabilization of the interior floors, and extensive re-plastering and repainting of interior walls. The State of Michigan removed the old boathouse and dock because of their poor condition and also removed the original sidewalks, steps, and shutters around the 1866 lighthouse. Today the light station and land is administered by Michigan's Department of Natural Resources is part of Fort Wilkins Historic State Park and is open to the public during the summer months. The DNR restored the light station building and structures after years of decay and maintains the station and its immediate surroundings free of any new park development. The station serves as a lighthouse museum operated by the Michigan Historical Museum in cooperation with the Michigan DNR's Parks & Recreation Division.

The Copper Harbor Light Station buildings and structures represent the evolution of lighthouse design on the Great Lakes at a single location. In the early days of the United States Light-House Service, lighthouses were constructed using the local materials at hand on site. The existing 1848 keeper's dwelling is a structure that reflected the type of architecture in the early days of the service. Following the establishment of the federal Light-House Board in 1852 to assume more professional and coordinated management of the nation's lighthouses, field inspections of existing structures found many to be poorly constructed or not built to the contract specs. These conditions prompted the service to begin to develop standardized building plans for lights that could be used at multiple locations. The 1866 replacement lighthouse/keeper's dwelling at Copper Harbor Light Station is an example of one of the board's "schoolhouse" designs that was used at a number of light stations throughout the Great Lakes region. As technology improved for navigational aids, the need for manned light stations became obsolete and steel skeleton towers with modern and long-lasting equipment became the norm until today's GPS and orbiting satellites have replaced the need for lights to navigate along shorelines.

Site Description

The Copper Harbor Light Station is located on the east point of the entrance to Copper Harbor in Keweenaw County, Michigan. It went into operation in 1849 as the entrance beacon to Copper Harbor and was one of the earliest light stations on Lake Superior. Currently, four structures exist at the light station. They are the 1848 keeper's dwelling, the 1866 schoolhouse-style lighthouse tower/dwelling, the 1866 privy and the 1933 steel skeleton tower. The 1933 skeleton tower is owned by the U. S. Coast Guard and stands on 1.1 acres of federally owned land at the tip of the point. The 1848 and 1866 structures stand on state-owned lands just east of the federally owned property. The landscape around the structures is hilly and rocky with shrubby vegetation while the rest of the site is heavily forested.

Copper Harbor is located about ten miles from the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. The small unincorporated village of Copper Harbor is located at the southwest end of a two-and-a-half-mile long, less than half-mile wide harbor off Lake Superior also known as Copper Harbor. The light station stands near the tip of a three-quarter-mile-long point that shelters the east end of the harbor; a shorter peninsula and an extension of it known as Porters Island shelter the harbor's west end, leaving slightly more than a half-mile wide sheet of water leading into the harbor.

The larger part of the complex stands on land that forms a part of Fort Wilkins State Park separate from the main part of the park. Most of the park, which contains the 1840s fort, with its restored wooden buildings, lies along the harbor's east shore across from the light station. The fort itself stands just inland from near the midpoint of the harbor's long east shore. US-41 ends near the entrance to the fort, and the blacktop soon trails off into dirt tracks leading into the virtual wilderness of the eastern end of the Keweenaw Peninsula. The only land access to this part of the park and the light station complex is a non-public dirt road through a private resort association's grounds. DNR personnel are permitted access to the property but there is no public land access to the light station. The private drive ends at a circle well east of the 1848 dwelling, from which a path leads to the 1848 dwelling. Public access is via a tour boat from a marina across the harbor. The boat docks at the state park east of the site, and a path, merging with the one from the circle at the end of the private road, take visitors to the 1848 dwelling and then to the rest of the complex.

The light station complex is comprised of the following features:

Original Dwelling (1848)

The original 1848 lighthouse keeper's dwelling stands a short distance inland from the harbor at the south end of the complex. This is a one-story rubble fieldstone structure, with a side-gable main section, with five-bay center-entrance front facing north toward the location of the original lighthouse, and a lower gable and shed-roof south (rear) kitchen section attached to the west end of the back. The main section has ground dimensions of thirty-four by twenty feet and the ell dimensions of twenty-four by fifteen feet. The building, restored in 1997, has wood shingle roofs and square-head double-hung windows with flat slab caps.

Lighthouse/Keeper's Dwelling (1866)

A concrete sidewalk runs north about 125 feet from the 1848 dwelling to the 1866 lighthouse/keeper's dwelling. Standing on a steep-sided low hilltop and atop a tall rubble stone foundation built of rock from the original lighthouse tower, this yellow Milwaukee brick structure is comprised of a one-and-one-half-story rectangular gable-roof residence, twenty-seven by twenty-nine feet in ground dimensions, with a forty-two-foot tall square-plan lighthouse structure centrally positioned on its west gable end. A shed-roof one-story, twenty-four by twelve-foot wood shed and cellar extension projects from the dwelling's east gable end. The square-head windows are of double-hung configuration, with flat stone slab caps. The dwelling contains a parlor, kitchen, pantry, bedroom, closet, and oil room downstairs and a large bedroom with closet and unfinished storage space upstairs. These rooms were restored after years of abandonment and deterioration. An iron circular staircase in the lighthouse tower leads to the second-story bedroom and, at the third-floor level, an open railed-in deck and an octagonal, six feet six inches-wide iron lantern room. The building was restored and opened as a museum in 1975. New period rooms were installed in 1996 and additional new exhibits were added in 1998.

Privy (1866)

The privy, located about fifty feet directly east of the lighthouse/keeper's dwelling, is a gable-front yellow Milwaukee brick three-hole structure with a segmental-arch-head doorway and a small segmental-arch-head window on its south side. The building has plain raking cornices and a modern wood shingle roof. The privy's rubble stone foundation is built of stone from the original 1848 lighthouse, which was dismantled when the 1866 lighthouse/keeper's dwelling and privy were built. The west-facing privy stands with its back at the edge of a bluff with an approximately twenty-foot drop.

Original Lighthouse Site (1848) / Lighthouse (1933)

Located about seventy-five feet west of the 1866 lighthouse/keeper's dwelling is the site of the original stone lighthouse built in 1848. That conical forty-four-foot-tall structure was demolished in 1866, and nothing of the original structure is visible at the site.

In 1933 the 1866 lighthouse was replaced with a sixty-foot steel tower located almost on the exact site of the 1848 one. A metal chain-link security fence encloses a small square area around the tower base. The 1933 structure, still in use as a lighthouse, is an open four-sided structure, with inclined posts at the corners, horizontal struts that subdivide each side of the structure into eight sections, and cross-bracing on each face. The corner posts rise atop four-foot-high concrete footings. When it was built, a wooden acetylene tank was placed directly under the steel tower. A 375 mm acetylene lantern with a one-and-a-quarter- inch burner was placed on the top of the steel tower. The lantern gave off a white flashing light. The steel tower was originally painted black, but due to its lack of visibility it was repainted white, the color still used today. In 1937 a new 300 mm lens was installed and the light was electrified; the acetylene equipment was retained as a backup system. A ladder in the center of the east face rises to a projecting railed-in square platform that contains the lighting system.

Light Station Sidewalks (1933)

Concrete sidewalks installed at the same time as the steel light tower connect the 1866 lighthouse/keeper's dwelling with the privy located about fifty feet east and run south from the lighthouse/keeper's dwelling to the 1848 dwelling and from there south to the old lighthouse dock location on the harbor.

DNR personnel report that a few apparent remnants of an old dock structure are visible just offshore from the south end of the concrete sidewalk south of the 1848 dwelling.

1933 steel tower and 1866 lighthouse, rear view, south elevation (left) & east elevation (right) (2009)

1866 lighthouse, front view, north elevation (left) & west elevation (right) and is where tower is located in photo (2009)

1866 lighthouse, entry door and spiral steps to the tower (2009)

1866 lighthouse, kitchen area with vintage stove (2009)

1866 lighthouse, pantry area with plaster walls (2009)

1866 lighthouse, close-up of the brick and mortar on west elevation (2009)

1866 privy, front view, north elevation (left) & west elevation (right) has the door (2009)

1866 privy, west elevation (left) has door & south elevation (right) has small window (2009)

1848 keeper's dwelling, south elevation (left) and east elevation (right) (2009)

1848 keeper's dwelling, east elevation (left) has the door & north elevation (right) (2009)

1848 keeper's dwelling, front entrance, west elevation (2009)

1848 keeper's dwelling, original fireplace and hardwood floor in the living room (2009)

1848 keeper's dwelling, living room area with exhibits (2009)

1848 keeper's dwelling, kitchen area with fireplace and wood floor (2009)