For more than 12,000 years, people have traveled on the Great Lakes, from Native American dugout canoes to wooden sailing craft and steel freighters, and over the last 150 years enormous growth in shipping has made the region critical to the national economy even as fire, ice, collisions, storms, thick fog, shifting sandbars, rocky reefs, and heavy vessel traffic claimed hundreds of vessels. Thunder Bay National Maritime Sanctuary encompasses 4,300 square miles and protects 200 shipwrecks preserved in the clear, fresh waters of Lake Huron. As population and economic growth accelerated during the 19th century, the federal government built a network of lighthouses across the Great Lakes to improve the safety of transporting people and commodities such as lumber, grain, iron ore, and cooper. At the mouth of the Thunder Bay River, the steel Alpena Light, known locally as Little Red and also as Sputnick, was built in 1914 after two earlier wooden light towers, the first built in 1877 and replaced in 1888 after fire destroyed it and much of Alpena. Originally painted black, the light received its first coat of red paint in 1950, and today eight lighthouses still stand within the sanctuary as reminders of past bravery and dedication.