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South Fox Island Lighthouse

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 FOX ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE ASSOCIATION

Facts & Maps

Fact Sheet

SOUTH FOX ISLAND LIGHT STATION
45° 22’ 41“ N, 85° 50’ 18“ W
(former light on steel tower)

Historic Tower With Lightkeeper's Quarters
-   Year light first lit: 1867
-   Year deactivated: 1934
-   Construction: Schoolhouse type, square tower, cream brick
    painted white with red trim
-   Light height: 39 ft above base, 68 ft above lake level

Steel Tower
-   Year erected: 1934 (previously on Sapelo Island, GA, 1905 - 1933)
-   Year abandoned: 1958 (replaced with automatic light system)
-   Year deactivated: 1969
-   Construction: Steel skeletal, Sanibel class  
-   Tower height: 60 ft above base

Assistant Keepers' Quarters
-   Year constructed: 1910
-   Construction: 2 stories, 3 dwelling units; red brick

Other Buildings  
-   Boat house (1897)
-   Oil house (1895)
-   Fog signal building (1895)
-   Carpenter’s shop, a.k.a. painter's shop (former summer kitchen)
-   Well house (1897 or 1898)

 

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Maps

Please note that the maps and plans below are not intended for navigational or constructional use.

Map Grand Traverse Area


 

In many documents, the workshop is called "carpenter's shop", in a few it is a "paint shop".
According to the interior, as abandoned in 1959 and assessed in 2006 / 2007, it clearly was
a paint shop, maybe also used for some carpentry work. To avoid confusion, the FILA plans
call it a workshop, so nothing can go wrong.

Plans before 1910 show a well house in the woods east of the fog signal building. Later plans
and aerial photos from the first half of the 20th century show a well house close to the beach
south of the historic lighthouse complex. In 2007, the Webmaster used triangulation to locate
that spot, where water pipes, other fixtures and some rotten beams can be found.

Furthermore, a little hut made of corrugated steel stands forlorn and without a visible function
in the woods north of the skeleton light tower and west of the workshop (not indicated in the
plan above). Anybody out there who knows if that is a displaced well house of which we know nothing?

 Maps designed by Hans Joerg Rothenberger 2006, partly updated 2008

  

 

Latest update Jan. 20, 2008