Photograph of Waugoshance Light — Photograph by Ddieffen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Waugoshance Light Station

Built in 1850. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

From the record

“The ruined lighthouse at Waugoshance protects boats from a shoal area at the northern end of Lake Michigan. The lighthouse is located in Emmet County, Michigan, United States, and in U.S.”
Wikipedia article Waugoshance Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 49 National Register listings published here for Emmet County · listed in 1983 · category: Building · built in 1850.

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 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. NW of Waugoshance Island, Waugoshance Island
When was it listed? August 1983
Category. building
Also known as. U.S. Coast Guard Lighthouses and Light Stations on the Great Lakes TR
When was it built? 1850
National Register reference number. 83000841 - 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.

Fires near this property

1 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Waugoshance Light Station in 1994, burning about 6 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
16 March 1994	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	6.0 acres	Hiawatha National Forest	not named

Every fire recorded in Emmet County

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.

Listed places nearby

3 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Grays Reef Light Station	3.2 miles	2005
White Shoal Light Station	5.2 miles	1984
Skillagalee Light Station	7.9 miles	1984

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 83000841 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Emmet County	All 49 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.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.