The East Channel Lighthouse

Off the southeastern tip of Grand Island, on the point the locals call the Thumb, stands one of the most photographed lighthouses on all the Great Lakes, and one of the loneliest. The East Channel Light was built in eighteen sixty eight, a simple wooden tower rising from the gable of a keeper's cottage, meant to guide schooners and steamers safely through the narrow channel between the island and the mainland and into Munising Harbor. It was never an easy light.

Hard to see from open water and hard to maintain, it was outshined when brighter range lights went up on the mainland, and by nineteen oh eight or nineteen thirteen, sources differ, it was taken out of service entirely. Left to the weather, the little wooden lighthouse began a slow, graceful decay. Waves have eaten at the bank beneath it and the paint has long since worn away, yet it still stands, silver gray and leaning slightly, its reflection doubling in calm water.

It sits on private land, so you cannot walk up to it, but you can see it beautifully from a boat cruise or a kayak, and photographers time their trips to catch it glowing at sunset. Few ruins on the lake are so loved for simply refusing to fall down.