McGulpin Point Lighthouse opens season with new restorations
MACKINAW CITY — At the very northern point of Emmet County, the McGulpin Point Lighthouse has kept watch over the Straits of Mackinac since 1869.
In active operation until 1906, the lighthouse was purchased by Emmet County in 2008 and reopened to the public in 2009.
Open seasonally for visitors, the lighthouse started its 2023 season in late May after an extensive restoration project helped combat increasing concerns about deterioration.
“It was definitely needed,” said Ryan Bauman, director of parks and recreation for Emmet County. “There were certainly some areas that were getting away from us and we wanted to make sure they didn’t get away too far before it was unsalvageable.”
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The restoration project began in early 2023 with National Restoration Inc., a company that specializes in historic restoration and preservation.
“They’ve done a number of lighthouses in Northern Michigan and in the Straits and in the U.P. and around this area, so they’re very familiar with this type of work and restoration work like this,” Bauman said. “It turned out great. It looks really, really good.”
Extensive work was done on both the interior and exterior of the lighthouse.
On the inside, crews sand blasted and repainted the tower, fixed plaster and repainted the walls, and sand blasted and repainted the metal spiral staircase up to the tower.
On the outside, crews did a lot of brick repair and concrete and mortar work.
“They restored basically every window on the lighthouse. Quite a few had some rot in there, so they worked out the rot and fixed accordingly,” Bauman said. “They repaired the steeples on the front and the back of the lighthouse. Those were dry rotted. They had a lot of woodpecker holes, so they filled those and restored the steeples. They also repaired the numbered placard on the back that had been kind of deteriorating and chipping away. The numbers weren’t really visible anymore, so they repaired the numbered placard on the backside.”
The Emmet County Board of Commissioners authorized the contract for the work in the amount of $99,300.
The lighthouse has only been open for about a week, but Bauman said the restoration has been “very well received” by visitors.
“We’ve had a number of recent tourists come through and it’s been very well received. It really kind of brightened up the whole place,” he said.
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Revenue from the McGulpin Point Lighthouse accounted for 11 percent of the parks and recreation department’s revenue in 2022. Bauman said revenue streams at the site include gift shop sales, rentals at an onsite cottage for overnight stays and tour admissions.
“It is a historic lighthouse and we want to share it with the community,” he said. “It’s funded through taxpayers, but we want to share this very significant historic property with our community.”
The McGulpin Point Lighthouse is located at 500 Headlands Road in Mackinaw City.
For more information about the lighthouse, visit mcgulpinpoint.org.
— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: McGulpin Point Lighthouse opens season with new restorations
