lighthouse located so close to a village with a school, stores and church was lure enough for a man with a growing family of five children. Over the ensuing years, Davenport’s brood would climb to 10 children, and it is stunning to conceive of so many people crammed into this little lighthouse on the bluff. With the construction of a new lighthouse on Old Mackinac Point two miles to the east in 1892, it became evident that it was unnecessary to shoulder the cost of two lighthouses which covered the same waters, and the decision was made to eliminate the McGulpin Point light station in 1906. Keeper Davenport was instructed to shine the station's light for the last time on the night of Dec. 15, 1906.
A Just Reward for a Remarkable Woman
Elizabeth Whitney was born on Mackinac Island in 1844 and moved with her family to St. Helena Island, Charlevoix, and then Beaver Island. At the tender age of 16, Elizabeth married schoolteacher Clement Van Riper, who changed careers in 1869 and accepted the position of keeper of the Beaver Island Harbor lighthouse. As was customary at such single-keeper stations, the young husband and wife shared lighthouse-keeping duties. However, Elizabeth's contribution was on a purely unofficial basis and without remuneration, for while female keepers were not unheard of on the lakes, their official appointment was relatively rare. Elizabeth would become one of those rare exceptions under sad circumstances, however, as she was officially appointed keeper of the St. James lighthouse after she saw her husband drown in the lake in 1872 after he and a local captain went to the aid of storm-pounded vessel off Whiskey Point. In her later memoir, she noted that the storm raged for three more days. Although “weak with sorrow,” she was buoyed by the knowledge that there were other mariners “out on the dark and treacherous waters who needed to catch the rays of the shining light from my lighthousetower. Nothing could rouse me but that thought.” Three years after Clement's tragic death, Elizabeth married Daniel Williams, who moved into the lighthouse with Elizabeth. Together, the couple tended the light for the following nine years. Elizabeth's prowess as a lighthouse keeper was evident when the District Lighthouse Inspector accepted her request for a transfer to serve as keeper of a new lighthouse under construction on Little Traverse Bay in 1884. Located within the exclusive Harbor Point resort association and within walking distance of the flourishing community of Harbor Springs, the Little Traverse lighthouse was a premium assignment and an appointment for which any keeper would have given his eyeteeth. During her winter downtime at the lighthouse, Elizabeth penned her famous autobiography, “A Child of the Sea & Life Among the Mormons,” a book which remains popular to this day. Elizabeth continued to serve as keeper at Little Traverse until her retirement in 1913, when after 43 years of faithful lighthouse service she and Daniel retired to Charlevoix. Daniel passed away on the morning of January 22, 1938, and Elizabeth followed him 12 hours later at the age of 94.
A Pagoda Comes to Petoskey
With clean air, grand vistas and a growing number of hotels, Petoskey grew into one of Northern Michigan’s preeminent resort spots in the latter part of the 19th century. With an increasing number of passenger vessels entering Little Traverse Bay to deposit vacationers seeking escape from the stifling industrialized population centers to the south, the creation of an adequate harbor to protect moored vessels became of high importance. The Army Corps of Engineers began work on a $55,000 breakwater to protect the waterfront in 1895. In accordance with federal statute, the Lighthouse Board was required to light all piers and breakwaters, and to this end a pair of lights were suspended from a 25 foot tall iron post on the outer end of the breakwater in July 1899. The Engineers returned in 1907 and extended the breakwater an additional 400 feet and the lights were relocated to the structure’s new outer end. Considered insufficient for such an increasingly important harbor, the pole light was replaced with a white pyramidal steel structure in 1912. While the new tower was adapted from a plan previously used across Lake Michigan in Racine, Sheboygan, Milwaukee and Kenosha, the structure on the breakwater at Petoskey was the only example of the design used on the eastern shore of the lake. The lower part of the steel structure was octagonal in plan and featured sharply tapering sides to a height of 10 feet above the surface of the breakwater. A slender octagonal tower rose from the center of this lower structure and was topped by a unique lantern capped by an onion-shaped dome. The striking appearance of the design led to their being nicknamed “pagoda lights.”
Lake Michigan’s Shining White Palace
White Shoal lay just beneath the water's surface in the freighter track between the Straits of Mackinac and the ore docks at Escanaba. After a number of vessels ran aground there, the Lighthouse Board placed a lightship on the shoal in October of 1891. Evidently lightship life was not to the liking of the first crew, as the crew ran their vessel to Cheboygan less than a month later. All of the crew members except one man were fired and a new crew sent out to man the mooring through the end of the season. In 1907, Congress finally appropriated the massive sum of $250,000 to build a lighthouse to mark the shoal -- and what a lighthouse it was to be. continued on next page
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