White River Light Station

The area near the proposed light station site was desolate with little access from the land side; the nearest dirt road was more than a mile away. A small community sat about one-half mile north of the lighthouse site, across the new White River channel.

This community was named ´The Mouth´ because it was located at the mouth of the old original channel from the lake. The lack of land access made it necessary to bring many construction materials, and most workers in from Lake Michigan and White Lake. While there were a few workers from nearby, most were supplied by the Lighthouse Service and Army Corps of Engineers and came from the industrialized areas at the southern tip of Lake Michigan, Milwaukee and Detroit.

When the South Pier-head Beacon Light was first built, it housed a fifth-order Fresnel lens and Lard Oil lamp, and produced a fixed red light that was visible for about eleven and one-half miles. The wooden tower was 27 feet high; and with the addition of the pier height, the focal plane of the lens was set at 33 feet above the water. It was built of a square pyramidal framework with the upper half enclosed. The lantern room was made of metal and was painted black, while the wooden tower was painted white.
The tower remained white until April 19, 1917, when it was re-painted red.

Near the tower on the Lake Michigan beach was a small oil storage building that housed small tin containers of lard oil, for use in the lamp, known as ´butts´. This building was destroyed in December 1873.

From the Keeper´s Log:

12-4-1873 Terrible sea wind at 4 o´clock. Sea washing around storeroom on the beach. Got two men to help to remove the oil butts. Saved the government property with a great deal of danger from the driftwood washing around us. At 8 o´clock storeroom was beginning to move and break-up.

In 1902, the Fresnel lens was reduced to a sixth-order with a Kerosene lamp, and the range of the light was reduced to about nine miles.

The South Pier-head Beacon Light was accessed from a doubledeck walk along the south pier. The walk originally was made of wood and consisted of a walkway on the top of the wooden pier, with a second, elevated, wooden foot-walk above. The elevated foot-walk was built to protect the keeper from wave action during storms and to reduce the effect of ice in the winter. However, the elevated foot-walk was still not complete protection for the keeper.

On Oct. 9, 1876, a severe gale prompted the keeper to record in his log: "Sea very heavy with waves going over the elevated footwalk."

The original elevated foot-walk construction began in August 1875, when a construction crew was sent by the Lighthouse Service to build new pier cribs to lengthen the South Pier. There were two crews involved, one from the Lighthouse Service and one of local contractor personnel. On Aug. 25, 1875, the timber frames for the first elevated foot-walk were put in and later that same day a dispute occured. All work was stopped by Mr. S. M. Mansfield, the engineer of the project. He discharged the foreman of the local contractor and inquired into the conduct of the Lighthouse Service foreman a Mr. E. Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes was cleared, and work resumed several days later. Work continued for the next few months and the elevated foot-walk was finished in November 1875. In December 1875, the construction crew completed the final pier-end crib, and the South Pier-head Beacon Light was moved to its new position on Dec. 6, 1875.

As shown in the drawing of the beacon tower on page 10, the keeper walked to the end of the elevated foot-walk and climbed six steps to the tower door. Inside the tower, a small wooden ladder allowed the keeper to climb up into the lantern room to work on the lamp and lens, and to refuel the lamp.

The wooden elevated foot-walk was partially converted to metal in September 1901, and was fully converted to metal by 1910. The elevated foot-walk was tom down and removed on May 14, 1925, and was never replaced.

Excerpted with permission of the author from:
  White River light Station
  by Thomas A. Tag
  Copyright @ 1996

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