The White Shoal Beckons

One of the most iconic and isolated lighthouses in Lake Michigan will become an all-inclusive inn.

By Patrick Sullivan | Nov. 17, 2018

There was something in Brent Tompkins’ landlocked childhood that instilled in him a love of lighthouses.

When the 44-year-old remodeler learned of a chance to buy not just a lighthouse, but perhaps the most iconic lighthouse on the Great Lakes, Tompkins jumped at the opportunity. Through a government auction, he and a friend purchased the White Shoal Lighthouse in the middle of northern Lake Michigan for $110,009.

That might sound like a bargain for an 11-story, five-bedroom, 5,000-square foot tower with 360-degree views of Lake Michigan — or it sounds insane.

Terry Pepper, director emeritus of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association, said his nonprofit looked into buying White Shoal when the federal government first proposed offloading it in 2012. They passed.

“Our board just said, ‘We just can’t take on that responsibility,” Pepper said, noting that they estimated renovation would cost $3 million. “God love Brent and the other gentlemen that bought that lighthouse with their own money. Thank God they stepped up. If I were in better physical shape, I would be helping them.”
 
AN ALL-INCLUSIVE RESORT
Tompkins and his partner, Mike Lynch, formed the nonprofit White Shoal Light Historical Preservation Society and plan to restore the light, make it suitable for habitation, and open it as a bed and breakfast. They hope to accomplish that in five years.
The pair aren’t the first to try to open off-shore lighthouses to the public.

One is already open: The DeTour Reef Light in Lake Huron is accessible for day tours from DeTour Village in the Upper Peninsula, and there are several other projects in the works, like the restoration of the North Manitou Shoal Light, seven miles from Leland, where a nonprofit group plans to offer tours beginning in 2021.

But what Tompkins and Lynch have in mind is even more radical — they envision opening White Shoal as an all-inclusive inn where guests could stay for a few days or a week. They’d serve meals, operate a bar in the lantern, and offer excursions like snorkeling on shipwrecks or daytrips to Beaver Island. Tompkins said White Shoal could accommodate 15 overnight guests at a time, two staff members, and still have room for tour groups. Twenty people can fit into the parapet, he said.

Tompkins, who grew up in Merrill, in the center of the state, and today lives in Traverse City, knows that the isolation and confinement of staying in an off-shore lighthouse isn’t for everyone.

This summer, his group embarked on its first season of renovations (Tompkins won the auction to purchase the property in 2016; the sale closed earlier this year). Tompkins spent 10 nights at the light, five at a time. The first stretch he spent alone, the first person to stay overnight at White Shoal since it was automated in the 1970s.
White Shoal is undoubtedly a strange place to be, he said.

“The first time, I was alone the first five nights, and that was a little bit uneasy, as far as not knowing what to expect,” he said. “I did hear a lot of weird things, but I was so full of adrenaline, it didn’t matter.”

If the nonprofit can succeed at turning White Shoal into an all-inclusive resort, guests will have plenty of diversions to keep them occupied. Tompkins wants to establish a 1950s vibe and keep modern technology out of sight. He envisions guests in the common room watching movies screened from a projector or listening to music from a record player.

“There will be modern tech out there, but it’s not going to be visible,” he said. “It’s going to be like you’re stepping back in time.”
 
“IT DEFINITELY IS INSANE”
Tompkins understands that people question the soundness of his endeavor.
“It definitely is insane,” he said. “There’s no doubt.”

Tompkins notes, however, the progress that he and the other volunteers have made in their first season working on the light. They’ve installed a fully functional plumbing system that includes a flushing toilet and hot and cold running water. They’ve begun repairs on one of the site’s cranes so that by next spring, it should be able to lift boats out of the lake, enabling crews to stay at the lighthouse with a boat through rough weather.

While the inn is still years away, Tompkins said they plan to begin hosting guests — qualified, paying volunteers who have skills needed to complete projects at the light — as early as next summer. The “paying volunteer” model is one that keeps nonprofit lighthouse groups going throughout the Great Lakes.

Ross Richardson, a shipwreck hunter from Lake Ann and a White Shoal nonprofit board member, said Tomkins’ construction expertise (he works as a remodeling contractor) makes him perfect for White Shoal.

“He’s the right guy for the job,” Richardson said. “If there’s somebody that can figure out how to put it together within a reasonable budget, that’s the guy.”

Richardson got interested in the project through his interests in shipwrecks — shipwrecks and lighthouses, after all, are simply different parts of the same story.

White Shoal sits at the top of Lake Michigan, about halfway between Hog Island and the Mackinac Straits. It sits on a dangerous shoal that’s long been a hazard to boats making their way to or from Lake Huron.

Richardson said he believes he’s already made a new discovery on the edge of the shoal not far from the light. He believes he’s found the schooner W.S. Lyons, last seen in 1871. 

“I just love the idea that there’s things out there from the 1800s that can be discovered,” Richardson said.

He said he also plans to dive around the lighthouse. During the decades the lighthouse was manned, he said, anything unwanted would have been thrown overboard, potentially making the bottomlands in the vicinity an archeological treasure trove.

Richardson said he believes that the White Shoal will one day make an incredible and unique destination resort, albeit one that’s not going to be for everyone.

“The views are incredible — it’s in an amazing location,” he said. “But you better be comfortable with yourself when you’re out there. It’s kind of like when you go to an island, and you have a strange feeling, being surrounded by water.”
 
LIGHTHOUSES FOR SALE
Pepper’s group, the GLLKA, has taken care of the lighthouse on St. Helena Island, on Lake Michigan not far from White Shoal, since 1985.

Early on, the nonprofit leased the lighthouse from the government. In the 1990s, when the federal government was considering how to divest itself from lighthouse ownership, Pepper said he heard from someone that the National Forest Service who told him that agency was considering taking over the lighthouse. By then, GLLKA had already invested nearly a million dollars in the restoration. That struck Pepper and other board members as unfair; they lobbied for nonprofits to become eligible to take over ownership and care of lighthouses.

That helped shape how Michigan’s lighthouses would be sold off and eventually enabled private citizens to take over lighthouses like White Shoal and North Manitou.
The lighthouse sales do come with some caveats, however. Owners must keep the lights on and allow the U.S. Coast Guard to inspect them.

“All they care about is the light on top and keeping it operating — and the fog signal, if there is a fog signal,” Pepper said.

According to a press release from the General Services Administration, as of July 2018, 137 lighthouses had been sold or transferred out of federal ownership, with 79 transferred at no cost to preservationists and 58 sold by auction to the public.
Pepper supports the program to sell lighthouses to private organizations and people because he sees it as a means to get them in the care of those who are passionate about preserving them.

“I think it’s absolutely fantastic,” Pepper said. “These people that take over these lighthouses, they have done something that is very big. They have made a huge commitment, and they have to live by it, and God bless them for doing it.”
 
“A SPECIAL KIND OF PERSON”
For a lighthouse nonprofit to survive, they’ve got to be able to raise enough money to maintain the lighthouse, and in order to do that, they’ve got to be able to interest volunteers and paying guests to visit. Pepper said he doesn’t believe that will be a problem at White Shoal or North Manitou; each offers something different from what GLLKA offers on St. Helena Island.

While St. Helena offers the remoteness of the crib lighthouses, being that it is on an otherwise uninhabited island, it also offers a more traditional experience with plenty of land for guests to stretch their legs and explore. It isn’t a lonely tower perched atop a concrete bunker, jutting out of the unforgiving waters of Lake Michigan.

Pepper understands the appeal of both kinds of lighthouses because he’s got lighthouses in his blood. He remembers the day when he fell for them. Around 1989, while he and his then-wife lived in Indiana, they took a detour on a northern Michigan vacation and toured a lighthouse. Pepper said he thinks it was in Grand Haven.

Lighthouses became an obsession. He loved to photograph them. He devoured their histories. He travelled to museums and archives to research them. He eventually travelled to every lighthouse on the Great Lakes.

In 1991, he launched a website (www.terrypepper.com) that catalogs each of those lighthouses. Eventually, his obsession led to the position he was offered with the lighthouse association, a position that he said constituted a dream job after a career in manufacturing.

For a decade, until a couple years ago, Pepper was the GLLKA’s executive director; during those years, he led lighthouse tours from a Shepler’s ferry boat.

Back in the days when the lighthouses were manned, Pepper said, usually by a team of four keepers working three-week shifts, each taking a week off at a time, that isolation in a compact place could lead to problems. Not everyone was cracked up for the life, and some people cracked in the face of it.

“There were numerous cases of keepers having to file complaints against some of their assistants,” Pepper said. “It’s just like everything — the government hired these keepers; every once in a while, they would make a mistake, and they would find somebody who is not well suited.”

Pepper could not think of an instance where the isolation caused one keeper to murder another, but he’s read plenty of accounts of disputes and fights and other problems. The problem was that a good lighthouse keeper had to be simultaneously antisocial, comfortable with isolation, and also able to get along with other people in close quarters.

“It takes a special kind of person, you know, and every once in a while, they’d make a mistake,” Pepper said. “There were situations where somebody just turned out to be a really bad fit.”
 
AGAINST THE ELEMENTS
White Shoal opened in 1910. That means it’s endured pounding waves and brutal winters of Lake Michigan for over a century.

Pepper said each of the crib lighthouses are amazing feats of engineering because they are stone and steel superstructures set upon wooden foundations.

The wooden “crib” that holds up the lighthouse are wooden boxes constructed of 12-inch square timber beams. Boxes typically are 80-square-feet by 18–22 feet. They were constructed on land and floated out to the appointed spot, and then, from a freighter parked at their side, filled with rock and gravel until they sunk. Forms were built atop the boxes so that concrete could be poured to make part of the structure that sits around the waterline.

It works, Pepper said, because as long as wood stays wet, it does not rot.

“That wooden box is still down there, and it is that wooden box that still supports this massive steel and stone structure today,” he said.

Beyond its remarkable engineering, White Shoal is an especially fascinating lighthouse, Pepper said. It’s the biggest on the Great Lakes, and it was designed by the United States Lighthouse Service — seemingly with a spare-no-expense approach. The architects wanted to make it the most durable and comfortable lighthouse ever built.
It once featured Greek columns and ornate window pediments. It was sheathed in glazed white tiles so that it would glisten brightly in the sun.

“This thing must have shimmered out there in the daylight, it was so bright white,” Pepper said.

The designers hadn’t counted on water getting underneath the tiles and freezing during the winter, though. The tiles soon started to break off and after a few years, the tower was covered in wire mesh, with eight inches of concrete was poured over that, covering up some of the ornamental details that the designers had put into White Shoal to make it into a showpiece.

The White Shoal Light got renewed luster in 1954, however, when a red barber’s pole stripe was added, giving it its distinctive look.

If the design looks familiar, that’s because it was the White Shoal Lighthouse image that, until recently, was used as the model for the Michigan lighthouse license plates.

To donate or to volunteer, visit the White Shoal Light Historical Preservation Society Facebook page or www.preservewhiteshoal.org.