Frozen Lake Michigan Lighthouses: Tom Gill’s St. Joseph Ice Photos

Every winter, storms on Lake Michigan throw spray over the piers of St. Joseph, Michigan, and the water freezes where it lands. Railings grow icicles, the catwalk turns into a tunnel of ice and the lighthouses almost vanish under a frozen shell. Photographer Tom Gill has spent years recording these frozen lighthouses on the southeastern shore of the lake.

Tom Gill’s frozen lighthouse photos

Gill is a landscape and environmental photographer who has documented the natural and man-made features of southeastern Lake Michigan, above all its lighthouses. His favourite subject is the pair of lights on the North Pier at St. Joseph. In winter they can become almost unrecognisable as the ice builds up layer on layer.

Some of his most striking pictures came from the windward side of the outer light, where he went with his son Chris and one other photographer. The outer light stands more than 100 feet beyond the inner one, and the path between them can be just two or three feet wide and glassy with ice.

How the ice covers the lighthouses

The ice comes from the lake itself. During winter storms, waves up to 6 metres high slam into the piers, and with air temperatures that can fall to 20 below, the spray freezes almost instantly on every surface it hits. Thin railings become thick white bars, icicles hang in curtains from the catwalk and the towers swell into rounded shapes. A patch of red paint showing through is often the only clue to what lies underneath.

History of the St. Joseph North Pier Lights

St. Joseph sits at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, and it has guided ships since 1832, when one of the first lighthouses on Lake Michigan was built on the bluff. A beacon stood on the pier by 1848, and the present steel range lights were built in 1906–1907 after the pier was extended.

• Outer light: a square steel building, 24 feet on each side, with an octagonal tower on its pyramid roof. It originally held a fourth-order Fresnel lens.
• Inner light: a conical steel tower about 30 feet tall, which showed a fixed red light through a fifth-order lens.
• Range lights: the two towers differ in height by about 22 feet, so captains lined them up to steer safely between the piers.
• Catwalk: an elevated walkway runs from the second storey of the outer light along the pier to the shoreline.

The lights were decommissioned in 2005 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places the same year. The city of St. Joseph took ownership in 2013, and a local committee raised $2 million in private donations to restore them, finishing the work in 2016.

Visiting the St. Joseph lighthouse

In summer the lighthouse opens for free guided tours on Saturdays, with exhibits on the nautical history of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. Climbing the tower costs a few dollars, and the top gives a panoramic view of the lake and shore. Tours start at the beginning of the North Pier, with parking at Tiscornia Park.

In winter, enjoy the ice from the beach or the shore end of the pier. Gill’s photos show how narrow and slippery the pier becomes, and the lights themselves are closed to visitors. Other Michigan lighthouses that freeze over in the same way include Grand Haven South Pier, Muskegon South Breakwater, Ludington North Breakwater, Manistee North Pierhead and Point Betsie on Lake Michigan, and Grand Island East Channel and Eagle Harbor on Lake Superior.

For more winter ice, see how freezing water turned city fountains into sculptures, and how lake ice moved onto land at Mille Lacs and Dauphin Lake.

Related reading

• Ten Frozen Fountains: Ice Patterns and Winter City Scenes
• The May 2013 Ice Shoves at Mille Lacs and Dauphin Lake
• Ten Snow, Ice and Water Landscapes: Glaciers, Mountains and Frozen Shores
• The January 2014 US Cold Outbreak: Forecasts, Observations and Winter Impacts
• The Ice Left by a Chicago Warehouse Fire Response
• Abraham Lake’s Ice Bubbles: Layers beneath the Surface

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