In 1961, my parents bought a piece of Michigan heaven — a 2.47-acre lot just up the road from Little Sable Point Lighthouse in Oceana County, near Mears.
I was 11. I had never seen a lighthouse up close, and the majesty of this one — nestled in the golden dunes, with the cerulean-blue sky and the deeper hue of Lake Michigan as the backdrop — simply blew me away.
When our tribe of nine settled nearby, the lighthouse was painted white and remnants of the former lighthouse keeper’s home kept guard over the sandy beach. Over the years, my family built a cottage, surfed in the big waves of the lake, and watched as the lighthouse’s bricks were sandblasted and returned to their original red. On clear evenings, my sisters and I grabbed our sleeping bags and spread them out on the dunes for a night-long adventure that included watching for shooting stars, feeling the cool breezes coming off the lake, and being aware of the calming comfort of the lighthouse’s intermittent beacon.
Three centuries earlier, French explorers called the site “Petite Pointe au Sable” (little point of sand), a name the lighthouse kept until 1910. The 115-foot-tower was designed by Orlando Metcalf Poe and completed in 1874 to guide busy ship traffic headed to the area’s bustling lumber markets.
The lighthouse is topped with a copper roof; below that, a decagonal lantern room houses the light’s original third-order Fresnel lens. Made in Paris, the lens features hand-ground glass prisms that intensify the glow of a center lamp, which, before electrification in 1954, originally burned lard oil.
Little Sable’s lens also was rare in that its lower and center sections were fixed, while its upper section revolved, powered by a weight-driven clockwork mechanism. Every 11 hours, light-keepers had to manually wind it so it would flash at fixed intervals.
Today, the now-fixed-movement 40,000-candlepower light flashes white and its range reaches up to 19 nautical miles. Those who love Little Sable as much as I do (or those who want to learn more about the structure and its history) can tour the lighthouse, celebrate its shining 150 years, and take a plunge in the lake afterward!
For more information on tour hours: Sable Point Lighthouse Keepers Association, 231-845-7417, splka.org. Photo information: toddandbradreed.com.
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