Whitefish Point Light stands at a crucial turn in Lake Superior shipping lanes near Whitefish Bay and the Soo Locks, making it one of the lake’s most important navigational aids. First lit in 1849, it is the oldest operating lighthouse in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the oldest active light on Lake Superior; its present iron skeletal tower dates to 1861. The point lies in the Graveyard of the Great Lakes, a shipwreck-prone coast linked to losses from the Invincible in 1816 to the Edmund Fitzgerald. Now part of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum complex, the site also preserves a protected natural area known for exceptional bird migration.