Qualla: McGulpin Point Light

McGulpin Point Light: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cass from Mason, United States, CC BY 2.0. For 37 years, James Davenport trudged through Michigan snow to a small brick lighthouse on a rocky point west of Fort Michilimackinac. He was the only keeper McGulpin Point Light ever had, and his weekly letters to the District Inspector in Milwaukee did more than report on cracked window panes and leaking mortar. They tracked the ice. Every spring, while other keepers waited for orders, Davenport sent dispatches on whether the Straits of Mackinac were still locked solid or beginning to fracture. He was the only straits keeper to file such frequent reports, and the Inspector used them to determine when Great Lakes navigation could safely resume. A single man, watching ice from a single point, opening the shipping lanes for an entire system of lakes.

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Image: Cass from Mason, United States | CC BY 2.0

McGulpin Point Light: Norman Gothic on the Waterline

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Notorious4life (talk) (Uploads), CC0. The United States Lighthouse Board completed McGulpin Point Light in 1869 at a cost of $20,000. The structure is a true lighthouse -- a light tower physically attached to the keeper's living quarters, built as a one-story brick dwelling in what has been called a Norman Gothic sty...

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McGulpin Point Light: Replaced and Forgotten

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Notorious4life (talk) (Uploads), CC0. In 1906, the Lighthouse Board decided that the newer Old Mackinac Point Light, built in 1892, was doing an adequate job marking the straits on its own. McGulpin Point was deactivated. The lantern room atop the tower was removed, and the building was sold into private ownership, b...

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McGulpin Point Light: A County Takes the Wheel

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cass from Mason, United States, CC BY 2.0. In June 2008, the governing board of Emmet County voted to purchase McGulpin Point Lighthouse and its surrounding lakefront property -- including Lake Michigan shoreline -- for $710,000. The county allocated an additional $25,000 for signs, plaques, a flagpole, and promotional ma...

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Image: Cass from Mason, United States | CC BY 2.0

McGulpin Point Light: Relighting the Straits

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Notorious4life (talk) (Uploads), CC0. On May 30, 2009, roughly 1,200 people gathered on the McGulpin Point grounds for a relighting ceremony. Frank Ettawageshik of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians delivered an invocation, followed by a performance from four Native American drummers. United States Senato...

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