During the late 1800s, the U.S. Lighthouse Board created a system of coastal lights along Lake Huron's Michigan shore so mariners would always be within sight of at least one. With a light south of Forty Mile Point on the Presque Isle Peninsula and one to the north at Cheboygan, an eighteen-mile stretch of shoreline remained unlighted and dangerous, and in 1890 the board recommended building a light and fog signal at Forty Mile Point. The light was completed in 1896, and Xavier Rains served as the first keeper. The lighthouse site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, and in 1998 it was transferred to Presque Isle County, although the Coast Guard retained ownership of its Fresnel lens. Lake Huron, named La Mer Douce by seventeenth century French explorers, is the second largest of the five Great Lakes, with over 3,800 miles of shoreline and 30,000 islands, including Manitoulin, the world's largest freshwater island. Violent storms on this freshwater sea have made it dangerous for ships, and as of 2006, 1,200 wrecks had been recorded. During the Big Blow of 1905, twenty-seven wooden vessels were lost, including the steamer Joseph S. Fay, which ran aground, and a portion of its hull rests on the beach about 200 feet north of the Forty Mile Lighthouse. The Great Storm of 1913 was responsible for sinking many modern steel ships.