ST. HELENA ISLAND, Mich. » MaryAnn Moore and Pan Godchaux had eager smiles and the to-do list ready when their guests arrived for a four-day stay. "Sweep sidewalks and dock," it said. "Wash tower windows. Pump water."

And for anyone feeling really generous, two big requests were scrawled on a kitchen whiteboard: a boat "that doesn’t leak" and "$1,000,000."

The women are keepers of a lighthouse, nine miles from the nearest town, on an uninhabited island at the treacherous convergence of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. For more than 10 years, volunteer keepers have worked to restore the 137-year-old station, and in the summer they count on vacationing friends and preservation-minded Michiganders to pitch in.

"We want to build ownership and for people to feel like, ‘This is our lighthouse,"’ said Moore, 63, a former teacher and full-time volunteer with the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association, a nonprofit group. "I want to do what it takes to keep it alive."

It takes a lot.

As GPS units and the automation of navigational tools have rendered traditional lighthouse keepers obsolete, the government has been decommissioning the properties it owns, nearly 50 over the last 10 years, and transferring ownership to new stewards at no cost, preferably nonprofit groups. When it cannot find a proper caretaker, the properties are auctioned to the highest bidder, which has happened 15 times.

Increasingly, people like Moore — history buffs and preservationists, youth groups and investors — are stepping up to do what the Coast Guard and old men of the sea have done for ages: tend to the nation’s lighthouses.

Three were declared excess just last month in Michigan. There are seven available in Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin, and five more are up for auction.

The catch is that new owners must maintain the properties to historic standards. And during a recession, with grants and donations ever harder to come by, the lighthouses have hit hard times, particularly in Michigan, a struggling state with about 113 lighthouses — more than any other state.

"I’m telling you this, you cannot restore a lighthouse with bake sales," said Scott L. Hollman, 69, who won the Granite Island Light Station in Lake Superior at public auction for $86,000 about 10 years ago, somewhat unaware of what he was getting into. "I can never get over the fact that they built this whole darn thing in one summer, and it took me two-and-a-half summers to repair it, with all the materials and technology we have today."

Restoring a lighthouse is not easy. Just after Hollman installed a custom-designed door, high winds blew through and shredded it. It took months to make a new one. "That little storm cost me 2,500 bucks," he said. "You want to do these things once and say it is restored and done. In fact, you do things over and over again."

Lighthouses even have their budding collectors. Michael L. Gabriel, 56, a lawyer in the San Francisco Bay area, bought two deteriorating lighthouses at auction: one, in Chesapeake Bay, for $100,000, the other, in Delaware Bay, for $200,000. "The alternative was doing nothing and losing them to the point where they’re not salvageable," he said.

Once a lighthouse is rescued from abandonment, the question for owners becomes "Now what?" Gabriel hopes to use one of the stations as a summer house, with the other, perhaps, catering to tourists.

"I’ve looked into doing a microbrewery, a hamburger joint, just little stuff to bring in enough money to cover the year-to-year maintenance," he said.

Some of the new keepers are working hard just to keep the lights on. (Or in the case of St. Helena Island, which is not wired for electricity, the volunteers are working to keep the candles lighted and the flashlights on.)

Abandoned in 1922, the St. Helena Island lighthouse has been a $1.3 million job so far, paid for mostly with donations and grants. In addition to the tower, the volunteers have restored the keeper’s and assistant keeper’s quarters, a boathouse and a dock. Materials and transportation to the island are the greatest expenses.

Moore, Godchaux and other leaders of the keepers association organize four-night stays at the compound for visitors who want to donate their time while living in the rustic keepers’ quarters. Last week, a quilters’ group from the Grand Rapids area took up residence and made a donation for their meals and transportation, as most visitors do.

Scrubbing pots in an outdoor bucket, one of the quilters, Kathy Cavanaugh, a bank teller, said: "This is a dream come true. My favorite part is treating this just like home. I really want to live the lifestyle."

That included hauling water from a hand-pump well, using a pit latrine in the woods and trying not to be too concerned about spiders and snakes.

The full-time keepers, Moore and Godchaux, have no navigational duties other than pointing out freighters in the Straits of Mackinac, a heavily trafficked shipping lane, to the guests. But they regularly paint, chop wood, clear brush and keep the tower clean. The Coast Guard retains legal access to the light, which still pulses at night, operated by solar power and automatic sensors. But the cast-iron stairs need to be scrubbed and painted, and the keepers’ quarters need a new roof.

"At some point, you could easily ask, ‘What the heck am I doing this for?"’ said Dick Moehl, 78, president of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. "It is a mental and physical challenge."

The association took over a second lighthouse from the government in 2004 and is in the process of restoring it, too.

"What we need to do is find a way to make things like this work in modern times," said Terry Pepper, the group’s executive director. "We still need lighthouses."

Indeed, many of the decommissioned properties in critical areas have working beacons because boating electronics sometimes fail. But Pepper was referring to an emotional need as well.

Jennifer Radcliff, president of the Michigan Lighthouse Fund, a nonprofit organization set up to help with restorations, said, "People need to know where their place is, and lighthouses acknowledge a sense of place that resonates in a real primal way."

The St. Helena Island Light Station will close for the long Upper Midwest winter at the end of the month. The island will be uninhabited until Moore and Godchaux return next May to open the shutters and greet volunteers, some of whom have already made up their minds to come back.

"Next year’s a given," said Cavanaugh, the bank teller, outfitted, for kicks, in a bonnet and long prairie dress. "Keepers need help. Don’t have to ask me twice."

© 2010 The New York Times Company