St. Martin Island is located off the Garden Peninsula in Delta County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. It is the southernmost island in Michigan that is part of a line of islands at the mouth of the bay of Green Bay and is part of the

Niagara Escarpment The Niagara Escarpment is an approximately discontinuous, arc-shaped but generally northward-facing escarpment, or cuesta, in Canada and the United States. The escarpment begins south of Lake Ontario and circumscribes the top of the Great Lake ...

.Pepper, Terry, Seeing the Light, St. Martin Island Lighthouse.
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National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

br> Maritime History Project, Michigan Lighthouses, Inventory of Historic Light Stations, St. Martin Island Light
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Geography

Gravelly Island, Gull Island, and Little Gull Island are approximately two miles to the north and east across the St. Martin Island Passage. Rock Island in Wisconsin is approximately six miles south-southwest, across the Rock Island Passage. It is from the Door County Peninsula.Lighthouse Friends, St. Martin Island Light.
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History

In 1864 the Peninsula Railroad was completed to connect Escanaba, Michigan to Negaunee iron mines. Escanaba's maritime commerce "exploded as vessels loaded with ore left the growing port headed for the hungry steel mills along the shores of the eastern lakes." The island and the surrounding

reef A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral, or similar relatively stable material lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic component, abiotic (non-living) processes such as deposition (geol ...

s are a hazard to navigation, and as early as 1891, the United States Lighthouse Board asked Congress for appropriations to build a light there. The request for a lighthouse was necessitated by the existence of a

shoal In oceanography, geomorphology, and Earth science, geoscience, a shoal is a natural submerged ridge, bank (geography), bank, or bar that consists of, or is covered by, sand or other unconsolidated material, and rises from the bed of a body ...

that extends out for a mile each way from the island. It took the

U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both ...

eight years to appropriate the funds. St. Martin Island Light was constructed in 1905. Robert W. Warner of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin was the first pilot to land on St. Martin Island in the early 1950s. To this day, no one else has traveled to the island by air. The Fred Luber family bought roughly 94% of the island (1,244 acres) in the 1980s, intending to build a resort. The remote location made development difficult and the island was left unimproved. The Nature Conservancy bought the island in 2013, intending to donate it to the

Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge of the United States located in the state of Wisconsin. It includes all or part of six islands in Lake Michigan: Hog Island, Plum Island, Pilot Island, part of St. Martin Isla ...

as it is an important bird stopover point. St. Martin Island and the lighthouse are off limits to the public.

Note

"St. Martin Island" may also refer to islands in

Mackinac County, Michigan Mackinac County ( , ) is a county in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,834. The county seat is St. Ignace. Formerly known as Michilimackinac County, in 1818 it was one of the firs ...

. There is the St. Martin Island at , which along with Little Saint Martin Island at and Big St. Martin Island at form the St. Martin Islands group in the St. Martin Bay.

In popular culture

The 1982 Canadian slasher film '' Humongous'' is set on St. Martin Island.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Martin Island Islands of Delta County, Michigan Niagara Escarpment Islands of Lake Michigan in Michigan