It doesn’t take a genius to see why a lighthouse was needed here; all you have to do is walk out to the edge of the bluff and look out over the broad shoal where the east and west arms of Grand Traverse Bay come together. In this season of low water, it’s a wide puddly expanse of shingle and rock – including some large boulders -- cradled between two narrow spits of land. But when the water is high, it’s hiding just out of sight, waiting to rip the bottom out of any unwary vessel. Which is what happened back in the middle of the 19th century, when a large ship ran up on the shoal and sank. In response, Congress set $6,000 aside to build a lighthouse. Unfortunately, the War Between the States intervened, so the project wasn’t finished until late 1870. It stood guard over that treacherous reef for the next 63 years, and was finally decommissioned and replaced with an automatic light offshore in 1933. Like so many other abandoned lighthouses around the country, the Mission Point light fell into disrepair and was in danger of being torn down. But in 1948, the residents of the Peninsula took up a collection among themselves and raised around $1,900 to buy the lighthouse and the surrounding property and turn it into a park. — at Mission Point Lighthouse.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:53:03 +0000
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