The Grand Haven catwalk that townspeople refused to let rust away

Two red lights ride the long concrete arm of the Grand Haven south pier, and a narrow steel catwalk runs above them, raised on legs over the walking surface. It looks like a quirky decoration now. It was a lifeline. When storms drove Lake Michigan over the pier, a keeper still had to reach the lights and the fog signal, and the elevated walk let him cross above the waves crashing across the concrete.

Lights have marked this pier since 1839, where the Grand River pours into the lake. The catwalk made Grand Haven one of only a handful of Michigan piers that kept theirs. By 1987 the Coast Guard had seen enough rust and wanted the thing torn down. People here would not have it. They raised about $133,000 to reinforce the structure, string lights along the pier, and pay for upkeep — a small town buying back a piece of its own skyline.

The fight came around again during pier resurfacing that began in 2016. Crews dismantled the catwalk and put it in storage, and again residents pitched in to make sure it went back up. In 2019 the catwalk lights came on for the first time in years, and the pier looked whole again.

You reach it by walking out from the Grand Haven State Park beach along the boardwalk that borders the channel. The two lights are painted the regulation red, the catwalk throws a thin line of bulbs out over the water after dark, and on a calm evening the whole pier glows a mile out into the lake — the same stretch a keeper once crossed with the spray coming over the rail.