Participants offer their time and service and sometimes pay a fee to see what it’s like to reside inside a beacon. Several Michigan lighthouses feature volunteer keeper programs. While members maintain the lighthouse and give tours, the group also opens a volunteer light keeper program to the public. Mary’s River near Drummond Island, are managed by nonprofit groups like the DeTour Reef Light Preservation Society. Others, like DeTour Reef Lighthouse in the St.
Some, like the Big Bay Lighthouse in Marquette County, built in 1896 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, are in the hands of private owners this site is now a bed and breakfast that caters to travelers on a cliff offering sweeping Lake Superior views. In 2000, Congress passed the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act to provide a mechanism for turning state beacons over to historic preservation groups, local communities and the National Park Service. I’m not a lighthouse junkie, but I like the people who come there to hear the stories I can tell about it. Later advances in navigation technology further diminished the need for lighthouses, which are costly to maintain. Once manned by men and women who tended to their care, the lights were eventually automated to save money, rendering the lightkeeper’s job obsolete. Coast Guard, which took them over in 1939 when President Franklin Roosevelt combined the U.S. Most still operate as aids to mariners, but many are no longer owned by the U.S. In all, there are 129 lighthouses in the Great Lakes State. The GLLKA also serves as a clearinghouse for information about Great Lakes lighthouses, including comprehensive listings of volunteer opportunities to live as a lighthouse keeper and vacation travel accommodations at lighthouses that have been converted to bed and breakfast inns. Helena Island Light Station in the Mackinac Straits, lit in 1873. The non-profit GLLKA owns two lighthouses, both of which offer volunteer keeper programs: the Cheboygan River Front Range Lighthouse, first lit in 1880, and the St. “This is the first year our volunteer light keeper program at our lighthouse in Cheboygan is completely booked up so early for the season.” Photography Courtesy of Thinkstock
But it has increased and increased - people are truly addicted to them,” says Terry Pepper, executive director of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association (GLLKA) in Mackinaw City, one of the nation’s oldest lighthouse preservation groups. “I thought the popularity of lighthouses was reaching its zenith a decade ago. Lighthouses stand prominently along the Michigan shoreline, many for more than 100 years.
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