Lighthouses
Seven towers and one retired pierhead light between Manitowoc and Sturgeon Bay: when each was lit, how tall it stands, whether it is on the National Register, and how close you can get.
Added in 2026. The original Schooner Coast page at this address was never captured by the Wayback Machine. This page was rebuilt in 2026 around the same list of landmarks the old site linked to, using public sources listed at the bottom.
Anyone who has worked a boat on this shore knows the order of the lights by heart, south to north, and knows that they are not pretty for the sake of it. Each one went up because ships kept hitting something. Manitowoc, Two Rivers, Kewaunee and Algoma had to mark narrow harbor entrances between breakwaters. Rawley Point juts out into the lake north of Two Rivers, right where ships running the shore had to swing wide. Sturgeon Bay needed a pair of lights once the canal opened through the peninsula. Here is the set, with the dull but useful numbers first.
| Light | Town | Current tower | Height | NRHP | Getting close |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manitowoc Breakwater | Manitowoc | 1918 | 40 ft | No | Walk the north breakwater |
| Rawley Point | Two Rivers (Point Beach) | 1894 | 111 ft | 1984 | From the beach trail; tower closed |
| Two Rivers North Pierhead | Two Rivers | 1886, moved 1975 | 36 ft | No | On museum grounds |
| Kewaunee Pierhead | Kewaunee | 1931 (pier 1912) | 43 ft | 2022 | Walk the south pier |
| Algoma Pierhead | Algoma | 1908, raised 1932 | 48 ft | No | Best from shore |
| Sturgeon Bay Canal | Sturgeon Bay | 1899, braced 1903 | 98 ft | 1984 | Coast Guard station grounds |
| Canal North Pierhead | Sturgeon Bay | 1903 | 39 ft | No | Along the north pier |
| Sherwood Point | Idlewild, near Sturgeon Bay | 1883 | 37 ft | 1984 | Limited; see below |
Heights are tower heights from the Coast Guard light lists as summarized on Wikipedia; "NRHP" is the year a light was added to the National Register of Historic Places. A "No" does not mean a light is unimportant, only that nobody has listed it individually.
Manitowoc Breakwater Light
The white tower on a square fog-signal building at the end of Manitowoc's north breakwater was built and lit in 1918. It is steel, 40 feet tall, and carried a fourth-order Fresnel lens; the light was automated in 1971. Its partner, a small beacon on the south pier, had a worse run of luck: on January 7, 2019, during heavy waves and lakeshore flooding, it was torn loose and swept out into the lake.
It is the light that greets the S.S. Badger as she comes into Manitowoc, and a short drive from the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.
Rawley Point Light
Rawley Point is the big one, 111 feet, the tallest lighthouse on the Wisconsin shore. Its skeleton tower has an unusual past. The first light on the point, reportedly a lantern hoisted on poles around 1853, gave way to a brick house and tower that went into service on December 7, 1874. The brick proved unsound, and in 1894 the plan became to bring in a used metal tower: the skeletal frame of the old Chicago Harbor Light, erected in 1859 and taken down when Chicago got a new one. It was lengthened with two extra stages of trusswork and first lit at Rawley Point on November 20, 1894.
The station was electrified in 1920 and automated in 1979. Until 1956 it was officially the Twin River Point Light. It still works, the keeper's dwelling is used as a Coast Guard residence, and the tower is not open to visitors. You see it best from the beach and the trails of Point Beach State Forest. The light station was added to the National Register in 1984.
Two Rivers North Pierhead Light
Built in 1886 at the end of the north breakwater, this was a plain pyramid of timber with a watch room and a lantern, showing a fixed red light from a sixth-order Fresnel lens. There was no keeper's house on it. The keeper of Rawley Point tended it, walking out along a catwalk that ran the length of the pier. A vessel hit the pier in the light's first month and damaged it; a fog bell was added in 1907 to 1909, a diaphone later, and the light ran on electricity from 1928.
A steel tower replaced it in 1969. Instead of being scrapped, the old wooden light structure was donated to Rogers Street Fishing Village in 1975. The lens broke during the move; a 2006 grant paid for its repair, and it went back on display in 2009. Today it stands on a raised platform in the museum grounds, the only lighthouse on the coast you can examine at arm's length.
Kewaunee Pierhead Light
Kewaunee's harbor light started on the north pier in 1889. When the current south pier was built in 1912, the light moved to an open frame tower in front of a fog-signal building, joined to it by a second-floor corridor. In 1931 the tower was taken off and rebuilt on the roof of the fog-signal building, which gave the light the shape it has now. The old open frame did not go to waste: it became the Chicago Harbor Southeast Guidewall Light, where it still stands.
Two details make this light stand out. A 1972 recording of its Type F diaphone foghorn was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2005. And it is now locally owned: the City of Kewaunee took title in September 2011 under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, and the Friends of the Kewaunee Pierhead Lighthouse raise funds to restore it. The fifth-order Fresnel lens came out on June 6, 2019, replaced by an LED beacon, and is on display at the Kewaunee County History Center. The light joined the National Register in 2022 and opens occasionally for tours.
Former Life-Saving Station
The old site listed a former life-saving station among the lighthouses without saying which; its page is lost. Two are worth knowing. The Kewaunee Life-Saving Station is the one whose surfman spotted the Rouse Simmons in distress at 2:50 p.m. on November 23, 1912. Its keeper had no boat at hand, his gas tug having gone out earlier, so he telephoned Two Rivers, whose crew went out in the power boat Tuscarora and never found the schooner. In Two Rivers, the old station building was moved off the waterfront long ago; Rogers Street Fishing Village tells the Life-Saving Service story in its Great Lakes Coast Guard museum.
Algoma Pierhead Light
Algoma began with a pair of range lights in 1893, and a fifth-order lens arrived in 1895. By 1907 the wooden tower was in poor shape, and in 1908 it was replaced by a conical steel tower, 26 feet high. In 1932 the whole thing was lifted onto a new steel base twelve feet across, which lifted the light higher and produced the red tower you see now. The light was automated in 1973 and switched to LED on June 5, 2019; its Fresnel lens went to the North Point Lighthouse museum in Milwaukee.
The keepers' list has one sad entry. Gustavus Umberham, keeper from 1901, drowned on February 3, 1913, when a wave swept him overboard from a small boat. His friend Eugene Kimball took over the light that April.
Former Lighthouse Keeper's Home
The original page linked a keeper's home here, again without surviving text. On this coast the keepers' houses tell you how each light was run. Rawley Point kept a proper Victorian dwelling, built in 1873 and still lived in. Two Rivers got a dwelling and oil house only in 1907 to 1909, built on the site of the old shore light from the 1850s. Algoma ran for years without one; in 1907 the keeper's quarters there were still unbuilt.
Sturgeon Bay Canal Light
At the Lake Michigan entrance of the ship canal, beside the Coast Guard station, stands the tallest light on this part of the coast after Rawley Point: 98 feet of steel and iron, first lit in 1899. The tower swayed badly enough that steel bracing was added in 1903, which gives it a resemblance to the reinforced Devils Island Light on Lake Superior. It carries a second-order Fresnel lens and shows a red flash every ten seconds. It has been on the National Register since 1984.
Sturgeon Bay Canal North Pierhead Light
The short red light across the channel mouth sits on a square fog-signal house at the end of the north pier. A first light was built here in 1882; the current cast-iron tower dates from 1903 and stands 39 feet. It once held a sixth-order Fresnel lens and now uses a modern acrylic lens. Photographers like it better than its tall neighbor, because the whole building fits in one frame with the catwalk.
Sherwood Point Light
Sherwood Point was not on the old Schooner Coast list, but it guards the other end of the same waterway: the west side of the north entrance to Sturgeon Bay, near Idlewild. The square brick tower, 37 feet, was lit in 1883 and automated in 1983, and it was listed on the National Register in 1984. Access is limited, so most people meet it indoors: the Door County Maritime Museum has a full-size replica of its lantern room. The original Schooner Coast text says that replica holds a fourth-order Fresnel lens, while the Coast Guard data for the light itself lists a fifth-order lens; the museum can settle it for you.
Haunted lighthouses and other stories
The old site promised a section on haunted Great Lakes lighthouses. We will leave the ghosts to the storytellers. The best-documented legend on this coast belongs to a ship rather than a light: sightings of the Rouse Simmons have been reported for a century, which you can read about in our guide to the Christmas Tree Ship. The real hauntings here are the wrecks, and there are plenty of those, many lying within sight of these towers.
Looking things up
Lighthouse figures disagree more than you would expect. A height can be measured to the top of the tower, to the lantern, or as focal height above the water, so the same light can carry two or three different numbers depending on who wrote them down. Two sets of records are worth going to first: the Coast Guard's Light List, the official description of every working aid to navigation, and the National Register nominations, which carry the building history. Lighthouse Friends and the county historical societies fill in keepers and dates.
If one of these lights turns into a school report, note where each figure came from as you go; with three sources disagreeing over a height or a date, you will not remember later which one said what. A citation helper can turn a Light List entry or a National Register nomination into a proper bibliography line without much fuss. For the stories behind the towers, the lighthouse visiting page has the access notes from the original site.
Practical notes
Pier walking is a fair-weather activity. The concrete is slick, there are no railings on most breakwaters, and waves that look modest from shore can wash right over the end. Stay off in a blow, and keep kids close.
If you want to see all of them in one trip, follow Highway 42 north from Manitowoc. Manitowoc, Two Rivers and Rawley Point fit in a morning; Kewaunee and Algoma in an afternoon; the two Sturgeon Bay canal lights and the Door County Maritime Museum make a good last stop.
Sources: Wikipedia articles on the Manitowoc Breakwater Light, Rawley Point Light, Two Rivers Light, Kewaunee Pierhead Light, Algoma Light, Sturgeon Bay Canal Light, Sturgeon Bay Canal North Pierhead Light, Sherwood Point Light and Rouse Simmons; National Register listings 84003706, 100007998, 84003666 and 84003663 as given in the county NRHP lists (all read November 2026).