CARP LAKE, MICH. -- All summer long, Brent Tompkins regularly boated past the historic Waugoshance Lighthouse while ferrying visitors and volunteers to a neighboring lighthouse, White Shoal, where he operates tours.

But on a routine boat run in late September, Tompkins noticed something alarming about Waugoshance: The lighthouse, which sits in the water at the western entrance of the Mackinac Straits, suddenly had a cavernous hole in its foundation.

“I drove by it and there was a gaping, glaring hole in the foundation that hadn’t been there before,” Tompkins said. “It’s getting bad fast.”

Tompkins immediately notified Chris West, president of the board for Waugoshance Lighthouse Preservation Society. This week, West was finally able to see photos of the damage, which he posted to the preservation society’s Facebook page.

West said that this year’s high lake levels, combined with particularly rough seas and some big storms in September, have eaten away at the limestone blocks comprising part of the lighthouse’s foundation.

“The water is the highest it’s ever been,” West said. “We’re losing a lot of stones, which are starting to break apart from the wave action. We need to figure out something quickly.”

A recent photo shows a dark area where Waugoshance's stone foundation has crumbled into the water. Photo by Brent Tompkins

West is currently researching options to determine a course of action. If the issue isn’t addressed within the next couple years, he said, the foundation is likely to give way, causing the lighthouse topple into the water.

One possible fix would be to hire a marine construction company to repair the damage and shore up the foundation. West said a quote from a local firm estimated that cost at approximately $750,000, which may prove to be prohibitively expensive.

An alternate idea that West has floated is to work with state agencies to build breakwalls fanning out from the lighthouse to turn the location into a harbor of refuge for boaters. A project of that nature would still be pricey, he said, but it would have the added benefit of giving the historic icon a functional purpose again.

“Storms come up quickly in that area,” said West, who is also the harbor master at the Mackinaw City Municipal Marina. “If we could create a safe harbor out there that would be ideal, because that’s the halfway point between Harbor Springs and Mackinaw City. It would be good for the boaters and good for historic preservation of the light.”

Waugoshance Lighthouse sits in the often-treacherous Straits about a mile north of Wilderness State Park’s Waugoshance Point. The beloved landmark already has had an eventful history: It is rumored to be haunted by a former keeper, and during World War II it served as a target for bombing drills and experimentation with radio-controlled drone crafts. Lit in 1851 and deactivated in 1912, it was the first lighthouse in the Great Lakes to be built in a spot surrounded entirely by water.

It remains to be seen whether this latest turn of events will spark the lighthouse’s next colorful chapter, or mark the end of its story.

“There’s a lot of folks out there who love Waugoshance," Tompkins said. “We gotta act fast if we want to save it, otherwise it’ll end up a big pile of rubble on the bottom of the lake.”