It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006, and the state inventory list the same year.

Shipping in and out of the Thunder Bay River has historically concentrated on logs, cut lumber, and rolls of paper and newsprint.

The first petition for a lighthouse at the mouth of the Thunder Bay River, from a consortium of men active in the local lumber industry, came in 1857.

[6] Congress partly responded to these appeals in 1867 with an appropriation of $10,000 to build a light at nearby Trowbridge Point.

It was a brown wooden pyramidal tower, complete with a Sixth Order Fresnel lens.

[13] The original Fresnel lens is presently located at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse.

[24] The Great Lakes lighthouse festival is centered in Alpena in the second weekend of each October, and this light was used in 1999 as a pictorial cancellation of stamps celebrating the event.

[5] In June 2011, the General Services Administration made the Alpena Light (along with 11 others) available at no cost to public organizations willing to preserve them.

It was dedicated on November 5, 2006, and is at GPS:3 4° 26.99' N - 114° 22.38' W. It is on the western tip of Havasu Island,[30] and has a red light that flashes sixty times per minute.