Spectacle Reef Light is a lighthouse 11 miles (18 km) east of the Straits of Mackinac and is located at the northern end of Lake Huron, Michigan.

[10] Because of the challenges of building on a shoal, including laying an underwater crib, it is said to be the "most spectacular engineering achievement" in lighthouse construction on Lake Huron.

[11][12] As the new century began, the Lighthouse Board operated 334 major lights, 67 fog horns and 563 buoys on the Great Lakes.

In the 1890s steel-lined towers began to replace the older generation of brick buildings, such as Big Sable Point Light.

For 1925, the Board administered around the Great Lakes: 433 major lights; ten lightships; 129 fog signals; and about 1,000 buoys.

[15] Construction began in 1870, in answer to the disastrous loss of a large number of ships during the 1860s at the site; in particular, two schooners ran aground and broke up in 1867.

[16] The lighthouse is built upon a reef shaped like a pair of eyeglasses (hence its name) and is located in the path of littoral commerce on Lake Huron.

The crib was constructed upon slipways at the depot, like building a ship, then launched and towed by tugboats to the reef, where it was sunk and grounded on the site.

After the construction of workers' quarters on the pier, a fourth-order Fresnel lens was temporarily installed on the roof of one of the buildings.

Construction was almost complete in the fall of 1873, when the onset of winter's storms forced the work site to be abandoned until the following spring.

With the installation of the cast-iron lantern room and a new second-order Fresnel lens, the work was complete, and the light was put into service in June 1874.

The combination of a crib foundation with monolithic stone masonry worked so well that the Lighthouse Board used the design and a similar process in constructing the Stannard Rock Light in Lake Superior in 1878.

The Board achieved economies by getting 'double duty' from the "costly apparatus and machinery purchased" for the Spectacle Reef project.

Masses of these dimensions create "an almost irresistible force", which for Spectacle Reef Light was "overcome by interposing a structure against which the ice is crushed and by which its motion is so impeded that it grounds on the 7–foot shoal."

The light has been described as "the best specimen of monolithic stone masonry in the United States" and "one of the greatest engineering feats on the Great Lakes.

But in a similar location and storm on Lake Superior at Granite Island, Michigan, wind speeds of 143 miles per hour (230 km/h) were recorded on January 18, 2003.

[4] In July 2005, "Spectacle Reef Light Station" was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as site #05000744, defined as "Located in northern Lake Huron, 10.3 miles (16.6 km).