Beaver Island Coast Guard station

Organization

Founded

1962-05-04

Coordinates

45.7425° N, 85.5095° WGoogle Maps: Beaver Island Coast Guard stationDownload KML

Eras

Modern era

Concepts

maritimeshippinggovernancecommunity

Within

Saint James

Summary

The Coast Guard station in St. James on Beaver Island appears repeatedly in the Beaver Beacon from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s as a seasonally staffed post at the mouth of the harbor. A local account places its opening at around 1915, and the May 1962 Beacon records Coast Guardsmen arriving on May 4 to open it for that year’s navigation season, one of several documented spring reopenings.

History

A September 1958 Beaver Beacon item, prompted by a visit from a former resident, reports that his father, Captain William Preston, “opened the Coast Guard Station on the Island about 1915,” that Preston organized the island’s first baseball team, and that he cleared the field near the station that was still used for ball games in 1958.¹ The earlier Life-Saving Station on the same site is separately documented as discontinued in 1922 by the Coast Guard’s own historical office; the Beacon’s 1958 account and that later official chronology are not reconciled here; both are preserved as what each source says.

A federal record falls between the two accounts and is consistent with either. The Census Bureau’s enumeration district descriptions for the 1940 census name the station as a landmark of the St. James Township district, ED 15-23 — so whatever its founding date, the station was a fixed and locatable feature of the island by 1940.

The station’s location at the mouth of the harbor is recorded independently in July 1956, when a Beacon report on harbor dredging described the new pipeline as reaching “almost to the Coast Guard Station at the mouth of the harbor.”² The same July 1956 issue reports a Coast Guard rescue: a fishing tug with eight Charlevoix men aboard ran aground off Hog Island in a storm, and “Coast Guardsmen from the Beaver Island and Charlevoix Lifeboat Stations” freed it the following day, after a boat from the “Beaver Island Life Boat Station” and a plane from the Traverse City Air Station were sent to the scene — the Beacon using “Coast Guard Station” and “Life Boat Station” for the same post within a single issue.²

Seasonal operation

Several Beacon issues document the station opening each spring for the navigation season and standing down over winter. In April 1960 the Beacon reported that “the Coast Guards returned to man the Station here on the 20th of April,”³ and the May 1962 issue reports Coast Guardsmen arriving “on May 4th to open the station in St. James for the navigation season.”⁴ Other Beacon issues place Coast Guard cutters at the island earlier in the same seasons on ice-breaking and supply runs — the Mackinaw and Sundew both visited in early spring 1962 to break harbor ice and deliver fuel ahead of the station’s May reopening — which were distinct from the manned station’s own opening but part of the same seasonal pattern.⁵

Evidence and limits

This article is not a complete institutional history. It does not establish the station’s official designation, full crew rosters, building history, or a documented closing date for any season, including 1962. The 1958 account of a c. 1915 opening under Captain William Preston has not been checked against the Coast Guard Historian’s Office chronology for the Life-Saving Station on the same site, which records that station’s discontinuation in 1922; the two accounts may describe the same post under different administrative names, or may not be reconcilable at all with material held here.

Added 1 August 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes