Photograph of Spectacle Reef Light — Photograph by Unknown, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Spectacle Reef Light Station

Built in 1874. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

From the record

“Spectacle Reef Light is a lighthouse 11 miles (18 km) east of the Straits of Mackinac and is located at the northern end of Lake Huron, Michigan. It was designed and built by Colonel Orlando Metcalfe Poe and Major Godfrey Weitzel, and was the most expensive lighthouse ever built on the Great Lakes.”
Wikipedia article Spectacle Reef Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 9 National Register listings published here for Cheboygan County · listed in 2005 · category: Structure · built in 1874, by Paul J. Pelz, Orlando Metcalfe Poe, Godfrey Weitzel.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. Located in norther Lake Huron, 10.3 mi. NNE of Ninemile Point, Benton Township
When was it listed? July 2005
Category. structure
When was it built? 1874
Architect. Paul J. Pelz, Orlando Metcalfe Poe, Godfrey Weitzel
National Register reference number. 05000744 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 05000744 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Cheboygan County	All 9 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.