McGulpin Point lighthouse, a beacon on the Straits of Mackinac for nearly 40 years until its decommissioning more than a century ago, will shine again May 30, 2009, and become the newest tourist attraction for Mackinaw City.

Two miles west of Colonial Michilimackinac, the lighthouse was bought by the Emmet County Board of Commissioners for $720,000 from the Peppler family in July. It had been privately owned for decades and was not open to the public.

McGulpin will be fitted with a new lantern from Tideland Signal, a Houston company, and will rejoin the U.S. Coast Guard's official Light List as a private aid to navigation.

McGulpin's new LED beam will be visible for 11 miles, slightly fewer than the original kerosenefueled lamp, which shone through a 3.5 order Fresnel lens. The lantern's cost of $3,000 will be borne by Emmet County, said Jim Tamlyn, chairman of the Emmet County Board of Commissioners.

The original light was transferred to another lighthouse a century ago, and no one knows where it is now, said Terry Pepper, executive director of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association in Mackinaw City. The 25-year-old organization oversees Michigan's 128 lighthouses and owns two itself, St. Helena Island and Cheboygan River Front Range.

Built in 1868 and bearing the name of a prominent early Mackinaw City family, McGulpin was the first mid-Straits lighthouse, although the earlier Waugoshance Light functioned at the western entry and Bois Blanc Island lighthouse the eastern entry.

McGulpin's weakness was that it was visible only from the west. When Old Mackinac Point light was constructed in 1892 in Mackinaw City, at the center of the Straits, the government decided that McGulpin no longer served its once-critical purpose. Old Mackinac Point, in contrast, could be seen throughout the Straits.

Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse has also been opened as a museum in Mackinaw City, operated by Mackinac State Historic Parks.