The widow who kept the light at Pointe aux Barques

Peter Shook lasted barely a year as keeper. In 1848 he moved his family into the brand-new lighthouse at the tip of the Thumb, where Lake Huron bends down into Saginaw Bay. Within months he drowned on a supply run across the open water — the first Michigan lighthouse keeper to die on the job. The light still had to be lit every night, so the government did something rare for 1849: it handed the post to his widow. Catherine Shook became the first woman to keep a lighthouse in Michigan. She tended the lamp on a lonely point miles from any town while raising her children. The keeper’s house then burned down within weeks of her appointment. It was rebuilt, and she came back for another season anyway.

The reason a light stands here at all is hidden underwater. A rocky reef reaches almost two miles out from the point, in places covered by only a couple feet of water, and for ships running the Lake Huron shore it was a trap. Sailors had wrecked on it for years before President Polk set aside money in 1847 for a tower to mark the turn.

The stout brick tower you can climb today went up in 1857, replacing the first one — nearly 90 feet of yellow brick with a spiral stair inside and a gallery at the top that looks straight down the coast. It is still a working navigation light, and it ranks among the oldest lighthouses in Michigan that are still active aids to navigation. The grounds around it now hold a maritime museum and the old Pointe aux Barques life-saving station, plus a small county campground.

Stand at the rail up top on a clear evening and you can see why they bothered. The water just offshore goes an odd pale green where the reef rises up, calm and innocent-looking, right where the boats kept going down.