Spectacle Reed Lighthouse, Lake Huron, MI.

This painting was great fun splashing watercolor onto the paper, After the paint dried, I selected a lighthouse that fit the space and painted it in. Pen & Ink supplied the smaller details. This is one of my favorites.
​Spectacle Reef lighthouse is at the east end of the Mackinac Straits in Lake Huron. It was named because of two very dangerous limestone shoals which resemble a pair of spectacles. The reef is exposed to the whole sweep of Lake Huron especially the ice flows in winter which made it difficult to construct a lighthouse that could withstand the current and ice pressures.
​ Blocks of Marblehead limestone form the solid bottom thirty-four feet of the tower and extend twenty three feet above the lake. The upper portion of the tower was hollow and formed five 14’ diameter rooms one above the other. The 2nd order Fresnel lens first shone June 1, 1874 at the large sum of $406,000. The structure is recognized as a monolith like the Washington Monument. The top two windows were left open at the end of each season so they could climb into the light at the beginning of the next season because the lower part of the light would be covered in ice and they would break out from the inside. in 1972 the lens was removed and is now on display at the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo,MI. May 2014 the light was deemed excess and it was finally sold to a private owner in 2015.
For more interesting history go to www.lighthousefriends.com. For prints and cards of the painting above go www.michignlighthoseart.com