Seul Choix Point Lighthouse & Museums

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Gary MacKenzie

From the 78-foot tower (96 steps up!) visitors can see all the way to the Beaver Archipelago on a clear day. The tower is also a good place to observe limestone being loaded onto freighters at Port Inland Harbor, three miles across Seul Choix Bay. Ships come in close to the light as they head down=bound for the steel mills east of Chicago. To find out when ships are scheduled to arrive, call (906) 283-3456 and choose the "boat schedule" option.

Looking up at the 96 metal steps that take visitors to a glorious view all the way to the Beaver Archipelago on a clear day.

In 1973 the Coast Guard automated this lighthouse and stopped staffing it. Later, in 1988, the Gulliver Historical Society was formed to collect local history and preserve the lighthouse complex as museum buildings. Its members have worked hard and successfully to garner donations, income, and grants for restoration.

Today the unusual, Romanesque-style keeper's dwelling by the tower and nearby buildings have been restored. Much is furnished as it might have been in 1930, when two families lived here. However, a small Coast Guard museum is in one bedroom, and in another, a remarkable 1/10 scale model of the lighthouse, made with 30,000 tiny bricks and a miniature Fresnel lens.

A separate building, the third keeper's home, now contains the gift shop (full of clothing, books, and memorabilia for lighthouse lovers) and archives (for Schoolcraft County genealogical research and for Manistique and Gulliver history). The video room offers continuous showings of two award-winning 45-minute videos, also sold here. One, on the history of Gulliver and its lighthouse, includes footage of the area when the first road was built.

The other video concerns ghostsand thought by some to be here and at other Michigan lighthouses. They say there's at least 150 documented cases of hauntings in Michigan lighthouses. A former keeper died at Seul Choix. Volunteers say he's been seen inside and out, that his image in a mirror has been captured on film, that whiffs of his cigars can be smelled, and that silver laid out on the table has changed position.

The fog signal building is an area history museum, with Native American artifacts, early school photos, dinosaur prints, and logging displays. Its centerpiece is a huge, hand-carved logging camp, modeled after the Parkington Road logging camp near Gulliver circa 1900.

The boathouse houses the maritime museum with displays on commercial fishing and on the Wilfred Sykes, the thousand-foot self-unloader that currently carries limestone from Port Inland to steel mills at Lake Michigan's southern tip. The ship's cooperative captains have donated ship logs, china, and more. Here too is the dugout canoe photographed by National Geographic. Underwater experts have traced the wood to Upper Canada; they believe the canoe was built for French voyageurs in the late 1600s. Steve Johnson's wonderfully realistic wall-size painting depicts the writing carved at the base of bluffs on Seul Choix Bay. Louis Metty, a commercial fisherman from Beaver Island and from Mackinac Island before that, carved the letters "alleur bienvenue" or "mariners' welcome" and "1868" as a tribute to the birth of his son and namesake on that day.

Township residents worked to have the DNR purchase the surrounding 10 acres for a park. Just northwest of the lighthouse, near the gift shop, are the park's picnic tables, restrooms (handicap accessible), and a boat launch on Seul Choix Bay. Rockytrails through fragrant cedars start at the park entrance, to the left of the rock wall in front of the fog signal buillding, and behind the building. The latter trails end on a beach covered with the shells of zebra mussels 2 1/2 feet thick. That he exotic invader first appeared in the Great Lakes in 1988. A native of the Caspian Sea, zebra mussels were carried in the ballast water of an ocean-going ship and discharged into Lake St. Clair. Read more about zebra mussels and other exotic species at www.great-lakes.net

In 2006 the historical society acquired two more area buildings being moved onto the site. They might be viewable sometime in 2007. There's an 1850 log cabin and the light station's 1895 assistant keeper's quarters, moved to
a nearby lake as a summer residence.

From U.S. 2 and CR 432 at the blinker in Gulliver, go south on CR 432 about 4 miles to CR 431 (gravel). Turn right (south) on CR 431 and go 4 miles to lighthouse. Now signed from U.S. 2. (906) 283-3183. Open daily from Mem. Day weekend thru October 15, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Also open at Christmas and various occasions. Private tours and bus tours by appointment, depending on weather. Free admission. Donation appreciated. $2 charge for lighthouse tower climb defrays insurance. Handicap accessible: fog signal building, gift shop, park restrooms, not keeper's house.

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