The Fox Island Lighthouse Association (FILA) is a non-profit that has transformed one of the oldest and most remote light stations on the Great Lakes thanks to hundreds of helping hands after nearly two decades of renovation.
President of the Fox Island Lighthouse Association, Cathy Allchin, presented at the Suttons Bay-Leelanau County Rotary Club last week about the light station and its past and current projects.
“It is truly a little bit of paradise. You don’t have much cell phone service, but there’s nothing else out there except for you and the lake. We have been involved since 2006, actively going out to the island. There’s been a lot of major milestones,” Allchin said.
In the last five years, FILA has whitewashed the lighthouse, led remediation efforts, and undertaken many other projects that often go unnoticed. In 2024, volunteers replaced boarded-up windows on top of the original lighthouse with brand-new ones, creating an amazing view. They also built a state-of-the-art island water station that uses UV light and five-micron filters to provide potable water for volunteers. “This year we replaced five of those (window) panels with a half-inch plexiglass,” Allchin said. “We’ve come a long way and it’s all because of the volunteers and the people that support us. Our biggest expense each year is transportation. Getting out to the station is necessary but expensive.”
In 2006, FILA was formed after Allchin went through a series of events. Back in 2000, Allchin was working as a first mate on a charter boat hired by a gentleman to take him and his son out to South Fox Island to scatter his brother’s ashes.
“I’m standing on the beach by where the boathouse was and I’m looking west. And on that day, it was a beautiful, calm day. Blue skies. It was just gorgeous. But for a brief moment while I was standing there, it wasn’t... I was not myself. I was a nine-year-old little girl. I have done drawings of what this girl looks like, what her shoes look like. And I stand there and I’m watching across the lake and there are big black rolling thunder clouds moving across the lake,” Allchin said.
The group yelled at Allchin, “You’re taking too much time. Get on the boat.” On the journey back, all she could think about was, “I got to do something,” Allchin said. That November, she was volunteering at a Thanksgiving dinner in Traverse City when she ran into one of the youth workers who shuttered the light station back in the 1980s.
“I put an ad in the Leelanau Enterprise and I said, ‘anyone interested in South Fox Island will show up Thursday night,’” Allchin said. “The only reason that all of this gets done is because of all these other volunteers who are willing to take a week or two weeks out of their life to help.”
South Fox Island, located in Leelanau Township, is unique, being 26 miles offshore and one of the most intact light stations left on the Great Lakes. South Fox is approximately 3,400 acres, five miles long, and a mile and a half wide. David Johnson owns two-thirds of the island, which can be rented out for $250,000 a week, according to BP Properties.
The light station was built in 1867 for $18,000 and is located on the southern 115 acres. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2023. Throughout its century of operation, 65 different light keepers, including assistants, ran the light station until it was automated in 1959.
The Coast Guard took over management of the property in 1959 and would come out every few days or weeks to ensure the batteries were operational. The federal government sold the property to the state of Michigan for $1 in 1971.
In 2004, a land swap between the State of Michigan and Johnson traded all of North Fox Island for two-thirds of South Fox. North Fox is the most remote island in Leelanau with only a few small structures and a landing strip.
“For 14 years the light station pretty much sat there,” Allchin said. “The state was going to take down all the buildings and just leave the original lighthouse, but they decided that was too much work to remove the material from the island. Remember, it’s 26 miles offshore and there is no dock. They sent the youth corps out in the 1980s and shuttered all of the buildings.”
The light station has an assistant keepers building that housed three apartments; a skeletal tower from Sapelo Island in Georgia, along with multiple other historic buildings on the island that were built throughout its hayday. In 2019, FLISA put a new roof on the fog signal building, one of the last remaining signal buildings of that size.
“We put this new roof on there. We saved our money for a couple of years, and then we opened it up and found that the north wall was rotted. So we had to reconstruct the north wall. Had we not done it that year, we would have lost the building,” Allchin said. “We take volunteer teams out there, probably five to seven people for a week at a time, if weather permits, to do restoration work. These volunteers come with the right skills that we need.”
FILA holds a 25-year lease on the property, enabling them to do work and maintenance until 2038.
FILA uses the Bear Landing craft out of Leland, run by the Munoz family, for transporting goods to the island. Recently, various solar panels were donated, helping provide limited power for volunteers and their projects.
