A lighthouse was erected on October 25, 1876, on the north side of the main entrance of the harbor to guide ships to the new Government Harbor of Refuge with a light visible for 3 miles. This first "skeleton" design tower had a lamp room at the top and a workroom below but no sleeping accommodations, so keepers lived ashore and rowed a mile to the tower. Because the design was inadequate for conditions a mile offshore, huge Lake Huron storm waves crashed against the breakwall and shook the tower violently. In 1885, the current lighthouse was built west of the breakwall, north of the main entrance, with a Fourth Order Fresnel lens that flashed a white and red pattern, a cast iron exterior, and a brick-lined and plastered interior. Instead of a spiral staircase up the center, it has six decks: a living and galley area on the first, sleeping quarters on the second and third, a work room on the fourth, a gallery on the fifth, and the lamp room on the top deck. A fog signal building stood on the foundation north of the tower, first using a coal-fired steam boiler and whistle, later gasoline engines and an air compressor that blew compressed air through the foghorn. The harbor and lighthouse developed through a long sequence of changes, beginning with the selection of Sand Beach in 1872 as the site of the Harbor of Refuge and the start of breakwall construction in 1873. Willis Graves became the first lighthouse keeper in 1876, Loren Trescott was appointed in 1878 and remained for 34 years, and later keepers included Archibald Davidson in 1920, Otto Both in 1935, and Thomas Radcliff in 1940. Other milestones included the 1880 conversion of the lamp to kerosene, the building of the Sand Beach Life Saving Station in 1881, the appointment of Captain Wagstaff as Harbor Master in 1882 and Captain Rice in 1898, the 1899 renaming of Sand Beach to Harbor Beach, the 1904 replacement of the breakwall's wood superstructure with concrete, the 1909 move of the Life Saving Station to the Jenks Dock, and the November 1913 storm that caused $300,000 in damage to the breakwall and killed hundreds of sailors as ships sank or were destroyed. In 1920 the U.S. Coast Guard took over Harbor Master duties, in 1935 a Coast Guard station was built 300 yards offshore in the harbor, and later in the 1940s the Coast Guard took over operation of the lighthouse. In 1967 the lighthouse began to be operated remotely from shore, no one lived in it after that year, and the fog signal building was removed. The Harbor Beach Lighthouse Preservation Society was formed in 1984, the original Fourth Order Fresnel lens was replaced in 1996 and displayed at the Grice House Museum in Harbor Beach, and in 2010 the city of Harbor Beach took ownership while the preservation society provided maintenance.