St. Joseph's two pier lights and the catwalk that kept the keeper alive

There are two lighthouses on the north pier at St. Joseph, not one, and the smaller details tell you why. Out at the end stands a round, cast-iron outer light about 35 feet tall, capped by a watch room and a ten-sided lantern. Set back closer to shore is a squat square tower with a pyramidal roof, the inner light. Line them up by eye from the water and a ship’s pilot knew he was aimed straight into the river mouth — the two lights working as a pair, what keepers called a range.

Both went up over 1906 and 1907 on the breakwater where the St. Joseph River empties into Lake Michigan. The most striking thing about them isn’t either tower, though — it’s the skeletal steel walkway raised on legs that runs from the shore out to the lights. That catwalk wasn’t built for the tourists who now love it. It was built because Lake Michigan throws water and ice clean over the pier in a blow, and a keeper trying to walk the deck to tend the lamps could be swept off and drowned. The elevated walk gave him a way out above the waves.

The Coast Guard ran the lights until they were decommissioned in 2005, and in 2013 the federal government handed them over to the City of St. Joseph. A local committee then raised around two million dollars in donations and restored the towers and catwalk to roughly their 1930s look, finishing in 2016. The lights, the towers, and the catwalk now sit on the National Register of Historic Places.

You’ll see them on half the postcards in town, the red-trimmed towers and that long iron catwalk marching out over the water — beautiful in summer, and in a February gale, completely encased in ice.