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Whitefish Point Light Station
Whitefish Point Lighthouse
(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2005)
WHITEFISH POINT LIGHT STATION is not a place you stumble across accidentally. It is only with a purpose that you follow the lone road 10 miles north from the tiny town of Paradise, Michigan, until it ends on the beach on an eastern corner of the Upper Peninsula’s north coast.
For decades, the point saw few guests. A lighthouse keeper and his family kept a lamp burning beginning in 1849. By 1923, a life-saving crew stood ready when duty called. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and lighthouse (pictured) began drawing tourists to the point in 1985, but solitude quickly descends again when the museum closes for the day (or for the season on October 31). Visitors seeking a taste of the quiet past make a reservation to stick around for the night, lulled to sleep by waves and rustling dune grasses.
A couple of years ago, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society renovated the crew’s quarters at the complex into five guest rooms. Simple but comfortable, the rooms offer private baths, TVs and drawings of people and buildings from Whitefish Point history. Leather furniture in the common living room downstairs invites conversation and reading. In rooms on the building’s lighthouse side, the beam sweeps across the wall every few seconds.
As guests enjoy a continental breakfast at the kitchen’s wooden tables, Lake Superior breezes snap the curtains and often whisk a morning fog past open windows. Mighty freighters pass on the lake, and guests ponder the famous wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which lies just 17 miles out.
Open year-round. Rooms: $150 (includes museum admission). No children under 16 (888/492-3747; www.shipwreckmuseum.org/overnight.phtml).
KEEP YOUR OWN LAKE WATCH
These three bed and breakfasts along Lake Superior are housed in former lighthouses.
BIG BAY POINT LIGHTHOUSE BED AND BREAKFAST Big Bay, Michigan. This seven-room inn pampers with spa services in a gazebo overlooking the lake. Rooms from $117 (906/345-9957; www.bigbaylighthouse.com).
LIGHTHOUSE BED AND BREAKFAST Two Harbors, Minnesota. Guests become "assistant lightkeepers, " performing duties keepers would have done when the lighthouse was built in 1892. The inn offers three guest rooms with shared bath and the separate Skiff House with private bath. Rooms from $125 (888/832-5606; www.lighthousebb.org).
SAND HILLS LIGHTHOUSE INN Ahmeek, Michigan. An expansive house built to accommodate three keeper families, this inn now boasts eight guest rooms (six with lake views) decorated in Victorian splendor. Rooms from $125 (906/337-1744; www.sandhillslighthouseinn.com).
