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- Lookout Point · Beaver Island
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- Beaver Island History Map, 1978 revision
Summary
The Beaver Island Coast Guard lookout tower was an elevated observation post in the Lookout Point–Sucker Point vicinity northeast of Saint James. The U.S. Coast Guard’s official history says a lookout station at Sucker Point watched the Garden Island channel. Later island accounts place the tower on the high ground reached from Lookout Drive and describe Coast Guard personnel walking there from Whiskey Point.
Chronology and limits
The 1978 Historical Map labels the structure “C. G. Lookout Tower—until 1974.” No inspected Coast Guard log, property inventory, newspaper removal notice, or movement record confirms that endpoint. A 2012 local account instead recalled that the tower had disappeared about thirty years earlier, while a 2025 account says daily Coast Guard manning ended by the completion of the Mackinac Bridge. Those statements may refer to different milestones—staffing, federal use, physical removal, or later reuse—and should not be collapsed into one date.
The 2025 account further says the tower top became a family playhouse and later the small white building at the entrance to Heritage Park. That is valuable oral history, but the building identity and moves still require photographs, accession records, deeds, or Coast Guard disposal documents.
No coordinate is published here. “Sucker Point” in the official history and the high point near Lookout Drive in later testimony establish a broad vicinity, not a surveyed footprint.
Open questions
- When was the lookout built, and was it a Coast Guard structure from the start?
- When did daily manning stop, and what happened in 1974 specifically?
- Can Coast Guard station logs or federal property records document its removal and disposal?
- Can photographs or Heritage Park accession records prove the surviving building’s identity and movement history?
See also
Sources
- Official Coast Guard asset history says an elevated lookout station was built at Sucker Point to watch the Garden Island channel. It does not give construction, staffing, closure, removal, or relocation dates, and its Sucker Point wording is not precise enough to establish a surveyed tower footprint.
- Described in this archive: Beaver Island History Map, 1978 revision.Labels “C. G. Lookout Tower --until 1974” and points to the northeast shore near Sucker Point. The map is an uncited retrospective source; 1974 is retained as its claim, not adopted as an independently established removal date.
- Beaver Beacon, January 2012, “Protection—Piece by Piece.”Reports that a Coast Guard tower formerly stood on the shore in the George and Althea Petritz Preserve/Lookout Point area, was used to survey shipping lanes, and had disappeared about thirty years earlier. The relative date is an imprecise recollection, not a removal record. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 2012-01_Beaver-Beacon
- Local-history account based on Johnny Andy Gallagher's recollections places the tower on the high point at the end of Lookout Drive, says Coast Guard personnel walked from Whiskey Point and manned it daily with binoculars until the Mackinac Bridge was completed, and identifies the small white building now at Heritage Park as the former tower top. It is retrospective testimony, not a Coast Guard property or movement record.
- A forum user sought historical information and photographs of a former lookout tower at the north end of the island near Beaver and Lookout. The inquiry confirms continuing community interest and a possible place-description lead, but supplies no historical fact, photograph, surveyed location, or proof that the inquiry concerns this Coast Guard tower rather than the separate state fire-tower record.forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 15 · t015664
Added 7 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Beaver Island Coast Guard lookout tower”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/structures/beaver-island-coast-guard-lookout-tower/, accessed [date], citing U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office, “St. James (Beaver Island Harbor) Light,” accessed 2026-08-07. (and 4 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-07. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Beaver Island Coast Guard lookout tower”RIS for “Beaver Island Coast Guard lookout tower”