South Fox Island Light Station

Light station

Built

1867

Coordinates

45.3781° N, 85.8384° WGoogle Maps: South Fox Island Light StationDownload KML

Eras

Modern era

Concepts

maritimelighthousesshippingheritage

Within

South Fox Island

Summary

South Fox Island Light Station is a historic light-station complex on South Fox Island. A 2012 Charlevoix Courier report identifies an 1867 lighthouse, a 1895 boathouse, and a 1897 workshop, and describes a preservation effort associated with the Fox Island Lighthouse Association (FILA), formed in 2004. For this station’s place in the archipelago’s broader lighthouse and life-saving history — construction era, automation, keepers, and comparison with the other stations — see Lighthouses and the life-saving service, which this article does not restate.

Condition and preservation record

The 2012 report says that in summer 2006 the lighthouse had heavy overgrowth, an exposed lantern room, leaking roofs, and damage risks from trees and moss. It reports that by early summer 2012, volunteers had removed overgrowth and dead trees, reopened walkways, protected the lantern room, removed rust and painted metal structures, capped and protected the damaged lighthouse roof, rebuilt the 1895 boathouse, and repaired the 1897 workshop. The same report describes the station site as 115 acres, says a Historic Structures Report for the station had been completed, and that work was under way toward a National Register of Historic Places listing as of September 2012.

A January 2009 report lists a $16,666 grant to FILA for South Fox Island Lighthouse under Michigan’s Lighthouse Assistance Program, part of a nearly $30,000 statewide round that also funded the Gull Rock Lighthouse ($24,000) and Manitou Island Lighthouse ($8,716); the same report says the state program grew out of concern over the U.S. Coast Guard’s disposal of more than 70 Michigan lighthouses and is partly funded by “Save Our Lights” license plates. Neither report establishes whether the National Register nomination was completed or how the grant was spent.

Evidence and limits

These reports establish dated, source-specific descriptions of the structures, reported conditions, the site’s 115-acre extent, a grant, and reported preservation work. They do not establish exact station coordinates, property ownership, a complete construction or keeper chronology, the station’s federal aid-to-navigation status, whether the National Register listing effort noted in 2012 was completed, grant terms or expenditures, or completion of all planned preservation work. The National Archives’ collection-level lighthouse logbook inventory, cited above, lists six South Fox Island logbook runs spanning August 1872 to December 1947 — evidence of a long operational record — but the inventory itself is a discovery aid, not a transcription, and the logbooks’ contents are not read here.

1913 federal photograph

The held July 1913 Bureau of Lighthouses photograph supplies a direct visual record of the former assistant keeper’s dwelling. Its own caption says the building was unused and 50 feet west. That is evidence for the photograph’s date, subject, and captioned status only; it cannot on its own explain the building’s construction, use history, occupants, or later fate.

Added 2 August 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes