Roofing can take you to very interesting and isolating places, and for the team at Doyle Inc. Roofing of Cheboygan, Mich., it included a historic yet rapidly-eroding structure standing three stories above Lake Michigan.
The North Manitou Shoal Lighthouse sits offshore on the northern end of the second largest of the five Great Lakes. It’s about nine miles from the famed Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore along Michigan’s Southern Peninsula and sits roughly a mile from North Manitou Island. That location, between the two land masses, makes the active lighthouse critically important for ships moving through the busy channel. The structure, completed in 1935, has helped thousands of vessels navigate a shallow shoal in the Manitou Passage. The United States Coast Guard operated it with a staffed crew until the installation of automated navigation controls in 1980.