The red tower at the end of the South Haven pier

It is the most photographed object in South Haven, and you can walk almost all the way out to it. The fire-engine-red tower planted at the end of the south pier is the South Haven South Pierhead Light, set right where the Black River empties into Lake Michigan, guiding boats through the narrow harbor mouth between the breakwaters.

A light has burned here since 1872. The cast-iron tower standing now went up in 1903, and in 1913 crews hauled it about 425 feet farther out, to the very tip of the pier where it has stayed ever since. On a calm summer evening the walk out is the whole town’s idea of a nice time — fishermen along the rail, kids dropping lines, the lake going pink behind the tower.

The detail worth noticing is the spindly metal walkway running alongside the pier, raised up on legs. That is the catwalk, and it was no scenic touch. In a gale, waves break clean over a pier like this; the keeper still had to reach the light to keep it lit, and the elevated catwalk was how he got out there without being washed into the lake. Most were scrapped long ago. South Haven’s is original, and it is one of just four left standing in all of Michigan — a piece of actual working machinery, not a decoration bolted on later.

The Coast Guard handed the lighthouse off to the Historical Association of South Haven in 2012, and the group looks after it now, opening the tower on certain days for anyone who wants to climb it. The pier has no railings on the far reach, though, and a storm sends water straight across it — which is exactly why, on a rough day, the smart move is to admire that red tower from dry land.