(There is also a Lansing Shoal Lighthouse on Lake Michigan. It is now abandoned. Comments on that post explain that the Coast Guard maintains the LED beacon in the lantern room, but not the building itself since it is now privately owned.)
At the end of these notes I discuss "satellite images."
The Waugoshance lighthouse replaced a lightship that was stationed on Waugoshance Shoal in 1832. It had red and white horizontal stripes when it was in operation. In 1912 it was replaced by the White Shoals Lighthouse. During WWII, the Navy used it as a bombing target by early drone aircraft. [MightMac]
LighthouseFriends has details about the construction and maintenance of the lighthouse.
 |
| Chris Roxburgh posted The Waugoshance lighthouse was built in 1850 15 miles west of the Mackinac bridge in Lake Michigan. Legend was that the light keeper John Herman after heavily drinking loved to play jokes on his assistant. John locked his assistant in the lantern room one night and by the time the young man got out of the room John was gone and never seen again. Aaron Thompson: When the [preservation] society dissolved, the lighthouse went back to the government and they said they won't put a dime into it restoring or demolishing it. My friend and I (who was the president of the society) would like to at least save the birdcage top on it but he said we'd have to wait for it to fall and catch it before it hit the water or we could be in a lot of trouble. [They could not raise enough money to stabilize it, let alone restore it.] Glenda Jill shared |
 |
| Joli McSwain Morris commented on Chris' post At one time it was a sight to see I bet. |
 |
| Dianna Higgs Stampfler commented on Chris' post One of the great haunted lighthouse legends of Michigan! I first heard of John Herman and his spirited story in the late 1990s. The incident in question happened on Oct 14, 1900 (the anniversary coming up next week). When I was researching my book, Michigan's Haunted Lighthouses, I dug into John’s story further and found that he actually died (10-14-1900) of a heart attack on Mackinac Island (not falling over the edge of the lighthouse). In fact…by the time the assistant was locked in the tower, John he been dead for hours! Maybe the reason they never found a body was it was his ghost that was responsible for this antic? 👻 As for the current condition of Waugoshance…after being abandoned in 1910, it sat vacant and was used during WWII for bombing practice (some very rough videos of this are on YouTube). It is now on Lighthouse Digest’s “Doomsday List” and sadly will eventually crumble into the lake. |
 |
| Aaron Thompson commented on Glenda's share Here's something I wrote a few years back: auntings at Waugoshance. Legend has it that lighthouse keeper John Herman was quite the prankster as well as a drinker. Story is, late one night in 1900, keeper Herman, in a drunken stupor, locked his assistant keeper in the lantern room as a practical joke. By the time the assistant was able to free himself, Herman was nowhere to be found and was never heard from again. It is believed that in his drunken state, he fell off of the crib and drowned in the Straits of Mackinac. After that, several keepers refused assignment at Waugoshance, citing rumors that it was haunted. The one's who did take the job though reported incidents such as coal buckets being filled on their own, furniture being moved around and their chairs being kicked out from underneath them as they slept. Some people have said if you travel out that way, you can feel a strange aura coming from the lighthouse (I've never felt it) so be careful, or you may end up as one of Mr. Herman's practical jokes. Muhahahahaha. Wayne Sapulski: Aaron Thompson it all makes for a good story, but Herman died ashore and remains buried ashore. Aaron Thompson: Wayne Sapulski yes, I know. He died on Oct 14th 1900 on Mackinac Island. |
 |
| Aaron Thompson commented on Glenda's share Waugoshance Point Lighthouse in it's heyday and what she looks like now. Opened in 1850 and deactivated in 1912. Located approximately 17 miles west of the Mackinac Bridge. It is believed that the fire that burned up the keeper's quarters started in 1943 when it was being used a bombing target for WWII by the US Navy. Story is that there was heating oil in the building and it sparked the fire. It is also believed that those bombs are what took out the roof and windows of the lantern room exposing the "birdcage" top. The big crib you see is entirely under water now. The small building in the front was taken out by ice in 1986. The water levels were over top of the crib and when it froze and the ice moved out, it took that little building with it. The boiler plate (the piece hanging off in the 2nd photo) was installed in 1881 because the bricks were starting to degrade. They poured cement between the boiler plate and the bricks and put anchor plates into the cement to secure it. Those anchors eventually gave way. You can still see the cement (left side of the photo) and that is what give her that texture. Some people think it is a crack in the tower. Sadly, people would travel out to the lighthouse and pilfer some of it's belongings. It is rumored that the staircase to the lantern room now sits in someone's house in Harbor Springs. The last photo I took, the hole on the right next to the door opening is from one of the bombs during WWII. |
 |
| Kevin toombs commented on Glenda's share To see it up close in person, it’s amazing it’s still standing. |
 |
| Jan 20, 2021: HarborLightNews "Efforts to save Waugoshance light abandoned as structure crumbles into Lake Michigan." The high lake levels over a couple of years has eroded the base. "The lighthouse at Waugoshance was arguably the first light built in the Great Lakes that was completely surrounded by water. Both its construction and its continued maintenance were extremely hazardous due to the severe weather conditions of the area." |
 |
| Justin Billau Flickr, CC BY 2.0 via AtlasObscura AtlasObscura describes the drone testing program that the Navy worked on in response to Japanese Kamikaze attacks. |
"By the end of the 1880's the size of the vessels plying the Great Lakes was increasing. These larger vessels, drawing more water, began entering the Straits of Mackinac at a point approximately four miles further North, in an area of deeper water. The White Shoal reef sat perilously close to this new passage, and in 1878, the Chicago Lumbering Company stationed an old derelict vessel over White Shoal to warn mariners of the danger lurking a few feet beneath the waves." Construction of a permanent lighthouse began in 1908 and was finished in 1910. [TerryPepper]
 |
| PreserveWhiteShoal "United States' only barber-pole lighthouse." It is currently closed for restoration, but it should "re-open for public tours beginning in July 2024!." |
 |
| Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association posted Unique in all the world, the beautiful White Shoal Light, MI on Lake Michigan - Photo by Bryan Dort at Photic Zone. The White Shoal Light Historical Preservation Society is the non-profit group working to restore this Michigan icon. Wayne Sapulski shared |
 |
| Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association posted A preliminary cross-sectional view of White Shoal Light, MI on Lake Michigan dated October 30, 1907 - Diagram courtesy of the White Shoal Light Historical Preservation Society. Robert Adams: Walked those stairs many times tending this Light for the CG, '85-'88. [As some comments observed: vertical living.] Michigan Film Photographer Karl Wertanen shared This is great. Usually you don’t associate Great Lakes lighthouses with having rooms and floors as they rise. Love the different doors and rooms. This would be a great lighthouse to tour. |
MichiganLights describes the architectural style as "integral to tower." Looking at a photo, it is obvious that that means the living quarters are inside the tower. Waugoshance is an example of a lighthouse that had a separate building for the living quarters.
 |
| LighthouseFriends, Photograph from National Archives "The wooden crib was towed to White Shoal by the tug Morford and then sunk using stone from the barge Gillen and the steamer Progress." |
If you access the GPS coordinates in the satellite links at the top of these notes, you don't see anything. I've concluded that Google Maps doesn't bother to process satellite images over open water. And I've confirmed that Bing Maps also doesn't display anything. So I fired up Google Earth. This is one of the better images of a lighthouse that I could find. Because of its location and the fact that most of the images have that white line to the east similar to the one in Justin's photo above, I think this is the Waugochance Lighthouse. The lighthouse was built on the west end of the shoal that caused it to be built. I don't think Google Earth processed satellite images out where the White Shoal Lighthouse is located.
 |
| Google Earth, Dec 2008 |
Over land, Google Earth's resolution is better. This is the 20'x20' BP filling station building at Ogden & Main in Downers Grove, IL.
No comments:
Post a Comment