Michigan Lights - Copper Harbor Range Lights

Copper Harbor Rear Range Lighthouse

There are two lights at Copper Harbor, Michigan. The Copper Harbor Lighthouse sits at the tip of a point guiding ships to the harbor but it isn't easy way to see without a boat.

The Copper Harbor Range Lights are easier to find but photography is difficult with limited vantage points from which to shoot.

The town of Copper Harbor is at the northernmost point of the Keweenaw Peninsula. U.S. Highway 41 starts its journey south 2,008 miles to Miami, Florida from here.

The road in Copper Harbor is lined with businesses. Cars park along the shoulder and tourists walk on either side of the road. We headed east along 41, then just before Fort Wilkins State Park we noticed the old rear range light.

The rear light shone from the top.

It doesn't serve as a lighthouse anymore. When it is used, it is home for the assistant manager of the state park. I was able to walk around the house and get pictures down the line toward the lake but the path to the front range light appeared to be private property.

This was the second of six lighthouses we were trying to visit on the same day and hopefully get to them before heavy rains moved on to the Keweenaw, so I worked fast.

Trees lined a creek to the lake on one side and what looked like private property stretched between me and the front range light.

While there is a wide opening to the harbor, ships could only enter safely through a narrow and deep channel, that's why the range lights are necessary.

The Copper Harbor light guides ships to the bay, then the range lights direct the ship into the harbor.

The front light is at low center.

To enter the captain lines up the front and rear lights then heads straight-in to avoid the reefs.

Reefs and rocks were in the scouting report a lighthouse committee sent back to Congress in 1863 in their request for range lights so ships could carry valuable copper to other parts of the country.

The lights were in place by 1868. Keepers lived in the Rear Range Lighthouse from 1865 to 1937 when both were automated.

When you look at a map of Lake Superior, Copper Harbor is at the very top, the knuckle of a finger pointing northeast from the middle of the lake's southern shore.

These lights and the men and women who operated them saved hundreds of lives and provided resources that helped the United States economy boom as it moved into the 20th century.

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