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After being dark for twenty years, and 109 years from the day when it was first lighted in 1904, Michigan’s Crisp Point Lighthouse was lighted this past spring as an active aid to navigation.
Reaching that goal was no easy task, but the volunteers at Crisp Point Lighthouse are never daunted by any obstacles when it comes to their lighthouse that was once considered the most endangered lighthouse in the United States.
Volunteer Cameron Lovett, a lifetime member of the Crisp Point Lighthouse Historical Society (CPLHS), did most of the research into the possibility of relighting the lighthouse, which included doing the necessary paperwork and getting approval from the State Historical Preservation Office. Then a permit needed to be granted by the Coast Guard to again make the light an aid to navigation.
But the group still needed to raise the money to purchase a 300mm optic, a goal that was quickly overcome by this active and dedicated group. Soon CPLHS members Cameron Lovett and John Raths began the process to manufacture all the necessary hardware needed to install the light, battery and solar panels. Then, over the winter months, often in bad weather, CPLHS president Rick Brockway and two of his snowmobiling buddies, Mike Allen and Tom Lander, along with CPLHS member Stan Klein, installed the light and the equipment. Anyone familiar with this remote area of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula knows how difficult it must have been just to get to the lighthouse in those winter months.
To learn more about Crisp Point Lighthouse, you can visit their web site at www.CrispPointLighthouse.org or visit with some of their members at their exhibit at the annual Great Lakes Lighthouse Festival in Alpena, Michigan this October 10-13.
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