Big Red: the Dutch-roofed lighthouse that wasn't always red

The squat steel lighthouse everyone calls Big Red wasn’t red for most of its life. When the present structure went up in 1907 at the mouth of the channel between Lake Michigan and Lake Macatawa, it wore pale yellow with a maroon base. The Coast Guard sandblasted and repainted it bright red in 1956 — not for looks, but for the rule that a light on the right side of a harbor entrance has to be red. The nickname stuck so hard that almost nobody remembers the old paint.

Look at the roofline and you’ll see the town’s accent. The building has a steep gabled roof, a deliberate nod to the Dutch settlers who came here in 1847 under Dr. Albertus Van Raalte. Van Raalte understood from the start that his colony would live or die by its connection to the big lake, and he spent years petitioning Washington for a real harbor. The first small wooden light here dates to 1872, after Congress finally put up $4,000 for it. The steel tower and the red house came later, as the channel deepened into a working harbor.

By 1970 the Coast Guard wanted out, and the light was slated for abandonment. Local people circulated petitions and formed the Holland Harbor Lighthouse Historical Commission to keep it standing. They won. In 2007 the federal government granted it protected status, making it the twelfth Michigan lighthouse to earn that shield.

The catch for visitors is that Big Red sits across the channel on the far point, with no road to it. You watch it from the Holland State Park beach, where roughly two million people a year line up the same view: a red house with a Dutch roof, a strip of dark water, and Lake Michigan stacking waves behind it.