Holland Harbor Light
lighthouse in Michigan, United States
The Holland Harbor Light, known as BIG RED, is located in Park Township, Michigan at the entrance of a channel connecting Lake Michigan with Lake Macatawa, and which gives access to the city of Holland, Michigan.
The lighthouse is on the south side of the channel. There are two modern lights marking the ends of the breakwaters that extend out into the Lake Michigan beyond the lighthouse.
History
After decades of local requests that went unanswered, in 1870 the United States Lighthouse Board finally recommended construction of the first light at Holland Harbor. It was thereupon approved by the U.S. Congress.
The light was replaced by a standard steel beacon in 1902, and in 1907 the Coast Guard built a steam fog signal building with two keeper's rooms adjacent to the beacon. In 1936, the steel beacon light was relocated to Chicago, and the Fresnel lens was moved to a new tower built atop the fog signal building. That created the structure now known as the Holland Harbor Lighthouse. In 1978 the lighthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Two identical Michigan State Historic Markers were erected in 1987, one on each side of the channel.
“Holland Harbor Light” enters the record as lighthouse in Michigan, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Holland, Harbor and Light can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5880958. Authority coordinates are 42.773, -86.212. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1902, 1907 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Holland Harbor Light” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.