A Lighthouse Built on Old Lava | Eagle Harbor, Michigan
Please Note: The below text is a modified transcript of the above video. For the best experience, please watch and/or listen to the video if possible.
This year (2021), I started a goal to, at some point, visit all of the lighthouses in Michigan — partly because I like spending time on and near the Great Lakes, partly because they're fun to photograph, and partly because there are some lighthouses in weird places, and I would like the adventure of going there.
In that spirit, I checked the first lighthouse off my list in January, and it turned out to be so much more interesting than I could've asked for.
It's called Eagle Harbor Lighthouse, it's on the north end of the Keweenaw Peninsula (in Eagle Harbor), and there is a fascinating story here — because sure, the lighthouse is beautiful, but there is also a lot of old lava up there.
Eagle Harbor Lighthouse sits on, well… Eagle Harbor. And while this harbor might look super small and cute, it’s actually a bit of a nightmare to sail into — partly because Lake Superior is its own special brand of unpredictable, but also because there are reefs stretched across the entrance to the harbor, not too far under the water.
It turns out, the reefs and the whole area are made of stacks of old, hardened lava, called the Lake Shore Traps, along with some silica-rich rocks. It’s all about a billion years old, give or take a few million years.
According to my research, Eagle Harbor ultimately formed because the tops of the lava flows were softer, so they eroded into the harbor. And the interior of the lava flows were harder, so they resisted erosion and became the harbor's arms. (My favorite part is that this dark lava rock is extremely easy to spot if you ever visit the area. Like, we spent half the time we were there admiring the lighthouse, and the other half admiring the incredibly beautiful surrounding area.)
The view across from Eagle Harbor Lighthouse. Prints available here.
Now, on the human side of things, this lighthouse exists because of the copper rush in Michigan in the 1800s, when a bunch of ships and crews were coming in and wanted to use the harbor. There were a couple of iterations of Eagle Harbor Lighthouse, but the current one opened back in 1871, and originally, it was powered by an oil lamp because, well... electricity wasn’t a particularly widespread thing at the time.
These days, as you would expect, the lighthouse is electric, and also it's fully automatic; the last lighthouse keeper left in 1982, and was the last in a line of 20 lighthouse keepers.
If you show up here in the summer, and also in non-pandemic times, you can take a tour of the inside of the building, and see the keepers quarters and those kinds of things — so, that’s something I’ll have to save for a return trip.
Landscapes aside, there is just something that gets me about an old lighthouse. And I think it’s because many lighthouses, including this one, exist at the intersection of human society and culture, and ancient geologic history. Like, in a way, this lighthouse exists because the Keweenaw Peninsula was full of copper, and generally, copper is useful and valuable to us, so at some point, a bunch of white settlers wanted to send boats and miners here.
But also, this lighthouse exists because a billion years ago, this area was covered with lava, and eventually, when that lava rock cooled and eroded, it created a treacherous reef across the mouth of the harbor.
There are more than 100 lighthouses in good condition in Michigan. Some are easy to get to, some are on islands in the middle of nowhere, and some... are somewhere in-between. And if Eagle Harbor Lighthouse is any indication, visiting them is going to be a great time.
If you show up here in the summer, and also in non-pandemic times, you can take a tour of the inside of the building, and see the keepers quarters and those kinds of things — so, that’s something I’ll have to save for a return trip.
Landscapes aside, there is just something that gets me about an old lighthouse. And I think it’s because many lighthouses, including this one, exist at the intersection of human society and culture, and ancient geologic history. Like, in a way, this lighthouse exists because the Keweenaw Peninsula was full of copper, and generally, copper is useful and valuable to us, so at some point, a bunch of white settlers wanted to send boats and miners here.
But also, this lighthouse exists because a billion years ago, this area was covered with lava, and eventually, when that lava rock cooled and eroded, it created a treacherous reef across the mouth of the harbor.
There are more than 100 lighthouses in good condition in Michigan. Some are easy to get to, some are on islands in the middle of nowhere, and some... are somewhere in-between. And if Eagle Harbor Lighthouse is any indication, visiting them is going to be a great time.
If you’re interested, the best places to follow along with my adventures (including lighthouse-related ones) are my YouTube channel and my Instagram account (@alexis.writes).
