Manitou Island Light Station

The Manitou Island Light Station consists of a skeletal steel light tower with associated keeper's house, outbuildings, and various walkways and foundations. The tower base measures square at the base and is high. The base supports a high skeletal tower, atop which is a cast iron ten-sided watch room and ten-sided lantern. A circular staircase covered with iron and lined with wood provides access to the watchtower. The original lens was a Third Order Fresnel Made by Le Paute of Paris and had six separate panels, each with a bull's eye prism. The current lens is also a Third Order Fresnel, with four panels inscribed P. Barbier and Co., Paris. The keeper's house is a ten-room, two-story frame structure on a stone foundation. It is sided with asbestos shingles (likely from the 1930s) and shingled with asphalt. The interior still has some original doors and woodwork, but much of the wall material and flooring are modern additions. == History ==

The first lighthouse on Manitou Island was a rubble-stone tower built in 1850. the other two were De Tour Reef and Whitefish Point lights, the latter of which still stands and it and Manitou are the oldest iron skeletal light towers on the Great Lakes); the keeper's house was built the same year. In 1895, an oil house was added, in 1901 a boathouse, and in 1930 a concrete fog signal building was constructed, replacing the earlier one. In 2004, the Keweenaw Land Trust acquired the light from the United States Government, along with surrounding land, The area is open to the public, and is available for camping, rock collecting, hiking, boating, sea kayaking, fishing, and sightseeing. ==References==