Tucked just inside the northern entrance to the sound is twenty-five-acre Kains Island, which was set aside by the Dominion Government as a lighthouse site on June 29, 1905. Kains Island was formerly known as Entrance Island but was renamed around 1898 to avoid confusion with Entrance Island off Nanaimo.
In 1904, the British Columbia Board of Trade asked the Department of Marine to establish a light at the entrance to Quatsino Sound to support the sawmills and mining industries that operated on its shores. As a temporary measure, a thirty-one-day Wigham light was placed on the southeast end of Kains Island in 1907, and G. H. Jackson was paid $300 a year to keep an eye on it. This seventh-order light had a focal plane of ninety feet and was mounted atop a small, enclosed, wooden tower built on an open-frame platform. The cost of establishing the light, excluding the illuminating apparatus, was $699.26.
Work on a permanent lighthouse began in 1910 using day labour under the direction of H.C. Killeen, with local Siwash Indians being hired to transport building materials to the island. A square, two-storey, wooden dwelling with an octagonal iron lantern rising from the middle of its hipped roof was finished that December.