In October 1975, the Ontonagon Lighthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In December 2000, President Clinton signed the bill giving the lighthouse to the Ontonagon County Historical Society.

In August 2003, the Ontonagon County Historical Society received ownership of the Lighthouse.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, Lighthouse Service, acquired the land for the lighthouse in 1847. The money for construction was appropriated in 1850 and the first structure was built in 1851-1852. By 1866, the original wood structure was replaced with the existing building, a simple one and one half story, rectangular, cream brick building with a square light tower at the North end. The extremely high basement was built to protect the living areas from flooding.

The light tower is three stories high, or 39 feet from the water to the focal plane, and is surmounted by an iron decagonal beacon house, which housed the fifth order Fresnel lens and light. Around the beacon house is a square, iron gallery consisting of a platform and rail.

In 1890 the 18 foot square, one story brick kitchen of similar construction was added to the south end of the house. In 1901-1902 the oil storage house was built.

In April 1963, use of the lighthouse was discontinued after an automatic foghorn was installed in the West Pier Light, and a battery powered light was installed at the end of the East Pier. The lighthouse was officially decommissioned on January 1, 1964. Arnold Huuki, the last lightkeeper, was given a lifetime lease on the building. The light and 5th order Fresnel lens were removed and are now at the Ontonagon County Historical Society Museum.

In the 1840’s there were very few ships plying the waters of Lake Superior, the greatest of America’s inland seas, and the vast mineral and timber resources of the region were only now being identified. In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the float copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula area as well as the great iron ore deposits of the Marquette range were only starting to be developed.

By 1850, the first of the Soo Locks was being planned, and indeed was completed in 1855, which opened the resources of the Lake Superior basin to the world. A whole new era of great lakes navigation was dawning. In those earlier days of navigation on Lake Superior, ships were still guided by stars and landmarks. Radio beacons and radar were a century in the future. The United States Lighthouse Service, which had established lighthouses along America’s seacoasts and in the lower lakes, was even now preparing to establish light stations along the American coast of the greatest of the Great Lakes to guide ships which would bring development to the lakes country and America’s northern frontier.

America’s first mineral rush began in earnest with the opening of the Copper District in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to the prospectors and mining developers following the Treaty of 1842 with the Ojibwe nation. Suddenly there was a great need for navigational aids. Among the first five lighthouses established on Lake Superior was the one at the mouth of the Ontonagon River, the largest river that flows into Lake Superior from the south shore. In 1851, a wooden lighthouse was constructed on the west side of the river’s mouth to guide ships to the port from which copper was being shipped from the mines upriver. In 1857, the Winslow Lewis light was replaced with a 5th order Fresnel lens, the latest thing in lighting technology.

At that time, there was a sand bar across the river’s mouth, so only smaller craft could enter the bowl-shaped harbor (the name Ontonagon is a corrupted Ojibwe word that infers a bowl or bowl shape). With the opening of the first Soo Lock in 1855, shipping volume increased dramatically. Permanent breakwaters were constructed at Ontonagon, the sandbar was dredged out, and Ontonagon became the busiest port on Lake Superior.

A new lighthouse was planned during the Civil War, but the actual construction didn’t take place until 1866 when a yellow brick structure in the "schoolhouse design" replaced the earlier lighthouse. It was this lighthouse, which would serve as the sentinel to the Ontonagon Harbor for over a century.

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