Saving a light
Lighthouse restoration under way on Gull RockBy DAN SCHNEIDER, DMG Writer
Article Photos
GULL ROCK - It's a long trip out to Gull Rock Lighthouse off the western shore of Manitou Island.
A journey to the rock Tuesday started in Peter Annin's Toyota 4Runner, tires scrabbling over rocks and splashing through brown-orange mud puddles on the rugged road out to High Rock Bay.
Then a ride in a 12.5-foot Zodiac inflatable motorboat, 15 minutes across the gap on relatively calm waves.
Gull Rock Lighthouse was built in 1867 to help boat pilots when Lake Superior's water wasn't calm. Its sustained red light, distinct from the flashing white light on the older Manitou Island Lighthouse located on Manitou Island's eastern shore, helped pilots navigate between Gull Rock and Keweenaw Point to shelter from northwestern storms below the eastern end of the peninsula.
"Boats wanted to be able to shoot this gap in a storm with the confidence of having a light there to get them to that safe harbor," Annin said.
Annin has crossed the gap in the Zodiac many times. He and his family camp on wilderness property he owns on Manitou Island. They have eaten numerous picnic lunches on Gull Rock.
That time spent on the half-acre of rock poking out of Lake Superior inspired Annin's interest in preserving the Gull Rock Lighthouse. He is now executive director of the Gull Rock Lightkeepers (GRL), a nonprofit group he founded in 2004 to restore the historic lighthouse.
"Gull Rock was becoming an orphaned light," Annin said. "Nobody was willing to or able to take it over."
Gull Rock Lighthouse is now owned by the Michigan Lighthouse Conservancy.
The GRL are restoring the light for anyone willing and able to make the trip to the rock.
"The thinking on my part and in Copper Harbor is this could be a destination light," Annin said. "Our hope is to restore the whole thing back to its original condition and then open it up to the public."
Tuesday, work was getting done putting that plan in motion. A four-man crew from Robert E. Johnson Contracting in Lake Linden was scraping asphalt shingles from the roof. These will be replaced with historically correct cedar shingles.
Partway into their second week on the job, they have already experienced some of Gull Rock's atmospheric vagaries.
"The project itself has been going well, but we've been having issues with the weather," crew leader Rob Johnson Jr. said. "We had an unbelievable thunderstorm come through last week. I thought, seriously, that we were going to get blown off the island."
The crew is living in a box-shaped bunkhouse with plywood walls and a tarp roof to keep out the elements, which have been varied.
"Not every day, but every other day at least it's some new extreme," Johnson said. "Like today it was the flies."
Midges, more midges, and midges on top of those midges drove the workers off the roof more than once Tuesday. The tiny flying insects were breeding in a thick layer on top of puddles on the lighthouse's gallery. Their flight was the consequence of rare still air.
"This is the only day it hasn't been windy," Johnson said. "Every other day it's been 30-, 40-mph winds."
Annin said this first stage of construction, including stabilizing the roof, replacing the asphalt roofing and shoring up the privy, should wrap up by the end of the month.
Grants are funding this first part of the restoration: $5,000 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, $10,000 from the National Architectural Trust, $40,000 from the state Historical Preservation Office. Grassroots donations totaling $5,000 have also helped.
While the contractors worked on the roof, a group of four volunteers spent Tuesday cleaning debris that had collapsed into the lighthouse's basement.
After years of weather falling through gaping holes in the roof, in Annin's words, "the second floor has pancaked down into the first floor, which has pancaked down into the basement."
Three of the volunteers hauling rotted, mildewed wood debris out of the basement were members of the Keweenaw Land Trust who had spent the previous three days working on their own light, Manitou Island Lighthouse.
"It's one lighthouse helping another," KLT Board of Directors member Christine Williams said.
Annin said U.P. Engineers and Architects have assessed the building and said it is in good enough condition, structurally, to make a full restoration. He said the estimated total cost of the restoration is $1 million.
There is still an operational light in the Gull Rock Lighthouse. It is white and powered by the sun.
Dan Schneider can be reached at dschneider@mininggazette.com
