Wednesday, July 8, 2015
CANA ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE-WISCONSIN
Cana Island Lighthouse in 1883
Photograph courtesy of National Archives
The Lighthouse Board began looking for a new location along Door County's Lake Michigan shore once it decided that the original Baileys Harbor Light was not in a proper location to serve as both coast and harbor light. Triangular Cana Island is about 8.7 acres in size. The lighthouse is located on the east side of the island on a section that juts into the lake, exposing the light to extreme weather. The station was built in 1869, four miles to the northeast of the fifteen-year-old Baileys Harbor Lighthouse. In July 1868, after President Andrew Johnson reserved the Cana Island for the light, Congress approved the abandonment of Baileys Harbor Light, and the construction of the lighthouse began. A hole was blasted in the island for the basement of the keeper’s dwelling, and crews later began construction of the one and a half story dwelling. The first floor of the dwelling consisted of five rooms and was reserved for the keeper and his family, while three rooms on the second floor served as the residence for the assistant keeper. The tower was built on an eight-foot foundation with double walls for ventilation. The outer wall narrows from a thickness of two feet at the base to fifteen inches in thickness about sixty-five feet above the foundation. The walls of the inner core of the tower are a foot thick, and six circular windows provide light during the day. The tower, which is connected to the dwelling by a passageway, was the tallest brick structure in Door County when it was completed. Cana Island’s lantern, which consisted of a watchroom topped by the lantern room, was contracted by the Lighthouse Board and assembled in the fall of 1869, though the light was not exhibited until January 24, 1870. The lantern room is topped by a three-foot-high copper dome surmounted by a ventilator ball that allowed gases from the lamp to escape. Vertical iron bars held the thick glass panes of the ten sided lantern together. The focal plane of the tower’s third-order Fresnel lens, manufactured by Henry Le Paute of Paris, is roughly eighty-two feet above the level of the lake. In 1890 a fireproof hexagonal oil house was constructed to house the volatile kerosene that was being used for fuel in the lantern room. The final improvement added in 1890 was a footbridge on the causeway to connect Cana Island to the mainland. Rather than try to repair the deteriorating brickwork of the Cana Island tower, the engineering department of the Lighthouse Board decided to encase the tower in steel plates. Starting in June of 1902, the metal plates were riveted together around the tower, and the space between the tower and casing was filled with concrete. By the end of August, the renovation was completed, and the tower had been painted white. In 1924 an acetylene light was installed in mid-November of that same year, and the light keeper was also informed that the station would now be closed during the winter months. In early spring, the keepers would return to the station and switch the light back over to an incandescent oil vapor (IOV) burner, which had been at use at the station since 1910. The keepers at Cana Island were also responsible for the lights at Baileys Harbor and Eagle Bluff, which had both been converted to unmanned acetylene lights. On July 1, 1933, Sanderson was replaced by Ross F. Wright, the last civilian keeper to serve at Cana Island. Electricity came to Cana Island in 1934, when power lines were strung across the causeway to the lighthouse. The Coast Guard absorbed the Lighthouse Bureau in 1939, and Wright retired as keeper in 1941. During World War II, the Coast Guard conducted training activities at the lighthouse. The dwelling was sealed off from the tower at this time and the south side entrance was added. After the war, the Coast Guard leased the automated lighthouse to Ralph McCarthy, who used the dwelling as a summer residence for the next twenty-five years. In 1970, control of the island and lighthouse was given to the Door County Maritime Museum.
EAGLE BLUFF LIGHTHOUSE-WISCONSIN
After the conclusion of the Civil War, the Lighthouse Board sent a committee to the western Great Lakes min 1865 to examine the navigational needs of the area. One of the resulting recommendations was a lighthouse on eagle Bluff that would help commercial ships pass through the Strawberry Channel, situated on the eastern side of Green Bay between the Strawberry Islands and the Door County Peninsula. Congress appropriated $12,000 for the project on July 28, 1866, and that October, President Andrew Johnson set aside twelve acres of public land for the project. Using cream-colored Milwaukee brick, masons constructed a two-story dwelling, measuring twenty-six feet by thirty-feet, atop the basement with an attached wing that served as the kitchen. The tower, which is nine-feet-four-inches square and has walls thirteen inches thick, was built at an angle into the northwest corner of the lighthouse and contains a spiral, cast-iron stairway to facilitate access to the three floors of the lighthouse and the ten-sided lantern room. Detroit Locomotive Works, which by this time had ceased making locomotives, built the lantern and shipped it to the site in pieces, which were assembled atop the tower along with the square, cast-iron lantern deck. A third-and-a-half-order Fresnel lens, built in France by the Henry-Lepaute Company, was installed in the lantern room, and on October 13, 1868, just six months after work had begun on the lighthouse, Henry Stanley exhibited the light for the first time. Visible for sixteen miles in clear weather, the 860 candlepower light was fixed-white and was shown at a focal plane of seventy-six feet. In 1877, the rock wall located just west of the lighthouse was built along with a woodshed for the station. In March of 1882, the district lampist removed the lard oil lamp from within the lens and installed a new kerosene-burning lamp. A detached oil house was typically provided to store the volatile mineral oil, but due to a lack of funds it was stored at the base of the tower for several years. In 1893 a barn (painted buff and white with a red roof) and a walkway were added to the site. A local driller was also hired to drill a seventy-foot well at Eagle Bluff, meaning the family no longer had to carry water up from the bay. A flagstaff was erected at the site in 1895, while work crews made minor repairs to the station. Telephone lines were also strung to the lighthouse. A Lighthouse Board crew constructed a brick oil house in 1890, seventeen years after the light began to burn mineral oil. An incandescent oil vapor lamp was installed in April 1917, but a year later the third-and-a-half-order Fresnel lens was replaced by a fifth-order lens as the increased brilliancy of the oil vapor light made the larger lens unnecessary. In 1926 the light was converted to an unmanned acetylene light. Maintenance of the acetylene gas light at Eagle Bluff became the responsibility of the Cana Island keepers, who were also responsible for the unmanned Baileys Harbor Range Lights. The Coast Guard replaced the acetylene gas system with a battery-powered electric light and later a solar-powered beacon mounted on the railing outside the lantern room, which still houses the fifth-order Fresnel lens. The Door County Historical Society opened the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse in 1963, and it remains a popular destination for visitors. The lighthouse itself was transferred to the State of Wisconsin in 2003.
RAWLEY POINT LIGHTHOUSE-WISCONSIN
Rawley Point Lighthouse in 1895
Photograph courtesy of National Archives
The Lighthouse Board’s repeated requests in 1871 and 1872 for funding for Twin River Point Lighthouse were finally answered with a $40,000 appropriation on March 3, 1873, and construction of the lighthouse began the following August. For some reason, Lighthouse Board records refer to the point almost exclusively as Twin River Point, though in 1888, it was listed as “Twin River Point, on Rawley’s Point.” Since 1956, the Coast Guard has referred to the lighthouse as Rawley Point Light. Progress was slow due to difficulty in landing materials and quicksand encountered while digging the foundations. By the time work for the year was suspended on November 7, a sturdy base for the tower’s limestone foundation stones had been established by driving a network of wooden pilings into the sand and then topping them by a grillage of cross timbers and a cement cap. Work resumed on April 23, 1874, and by the end of June, the tower had risen nineteen feet above the water table, its first landing and stairs had been set, the dwelling’s walls were finished, and its roof had been shingled. The tower and dwelling were completed in October, but due to the late arrival of the station’s third-order Fresnel lens, the inaugural lighting was delayed until December 7, 1874. However in 1890, the light tower, due to defective brick used in its construction, was in poor condition. The efforts to strengthen the tower proved ineffective, as the Lighthouse Board noted in 1894 that since the tower at Rawley Point continued “to crack and crumble,” plans were being made to relocate the metal tower from the discontinued Chicago River Lightstation, increase its height, and re-erect it a Rawley Point. A contract was made for providing the additional metalwork required, and the material for constructing a foundation for the new tower was delivered at the station in 1894. That September, excavations for the foundations for the eight support columns were made, concrete piers were poured, the foundation disks and cylinders bases were set, and the first section of the tower was erected just west of the dwelling. In October, 166,000 pounds of metalwork had been erected, completing the fourth story and bringing the structure up to the main gallery deck. The main deck, service room, watchroom, and lantern were completed in November, and the illuminating apparatus was transferred from the old brick tower to the iron tower on November 20, 1894. The new skeleton iron tower, which stands 111 feet tall, is the tallest lighthouse on the Great Lakes. In 1904, the clockwork mechanism for revolving the third-order lens was removed from the tower and taken to the district machine shop in Milwaukee, where it was thoroughly overhauled before being shipped back to Rawley Point. In the interim, the characteristic of the light was temporarily changed from fixed white, varied by a white flash every thirty seconds, to a fixed white light. A brick cistern was constructed on the east side of the dwelling in 1906, and a well was drilled to a depth of 103 feet to serve as a water supply for the station. The worn-out steam fog signal was replaced by an oil-engine-driven air compressors and a type G diaphone that commenced operation on September 23, 1919. The tower’s third-order Fresnel lens was removed in 1952, after one of its prisms was damaged, and twin DCB-36 aerobeacons were installed. Rawley Point Lighthouse was staffed until 1979, when the station became fully automated. The present optic was installed in 1987. The keepers’ dwelling at Rawley Point is currently used as a rental cottagee for Coast Guard personnel.
PORT WASHINGTON LIGHTHOUSE-PORT WASHINGTON, WISCONSIN
Port Washington Lighthouse in 1893
Photograph courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard
Congress appropriated $3,500 for a lighthouse at Port Washington in 1848, and that October a parcel of land on the north bluff overlooking Lake Michigan was purchased from Henry Genevieve Allen for $200. Built in 1849, the first Port Washington Lighthouse consisted of a conical brick tower that tapered from a diameter of twelve feet at its base to six feet seven inches at its octagonal lantern room, which originally housed five lamps set in fourteen-inch reflectors. The tower had a height of thirty-two feet, base to ventilator ball, but the bluff gave it a focal plane of 109 feet. A rectangular, one-and-a-half-story brick dwelling was located near the tower, and Cyrus B. Worth was employed as the first keeper. The total cost for the lighthouse and keeper’s dwelling was $3,380.60. After the Lighthouse Board was established in 1852, the system of lamps and reflectors, used in most of the lighthouses in the United States at that time, was replaced by the more efficient Fresnel lens. A sixth-order Fresnel lens was installed in the lantern room at Port Washington in 1856. Like many lighthouses built under contract for the lowest possible cost while Stephen Pleasonton was in charge of the country’s lighthouses, the first Port Washington Lighthouse had a rather short life. In 1859 – 60, the lighthouse was “rebuilt.” While material from the first lighthouse was reused, the new lighthouse certainly had a different design. Instead of being detached from the dwelling, the new tower was placed atop the southern gable of the new two-story keeper’s dwelling, which was built of cream city brick. To support the lantern, eight-inch-square beams rose from the attic as part of a square tower, whose weight was supported by bearing walls in the first and second floors of the dwelling and eight-inch-square beams in the basement that stood atop three brick piers. The lantern room was accessible via a stairway in the southwest corner of the first floor and a series of three ladders that ran from the second floor to the attic, the attic to the watchroom, and the watchroom to the lantern. The sixth-order lens from the first tower was used in the lantern room of the new lighthouse until 1870, when a more powerful fourth-order Fresnel lens was installed. In 1888, piers were completed in the harbor, and in 1889 a square, pyramidal tower was erected on the north pier to guide mariners into the anchorage at Port Washington. In 1894, a brick oil house was constructed for storing the more-volatile kerosene that was being used in the lights. A new pump for the station’s well was also supplied that year, and a cement sidewalk was laid between the dwelling and the woodshed. A 225-foot-long fence with steel posts, pickets, uprights, a foot gate, and a carriage gate was put in place in 1899, and six loads of gravel were placed on the road through the lot to the barn. In 1903, it was decided that the pierhead light was sufficient for marking Port Washington, and on October 31st of that year, the 1860 Port Washington Lighthouse was discontinued. The pierhead light was electrified in 1924, eliminating the need for keepers. The lantern room and tower were removed from atop the dwelling at this time, and the original purpose of the brick structure slowly started to be forgotten. After the breakwater light was automated in 1976, Coast Guardsmen continued to live in the dwelling until the station at Port Washington was eliminated in 1992. During the summer of 2000, Georges Calteux, minister of sites and monuments for Luxembourg, toured the museum during a visit to Ozaukee County, which is home to many residents with Luxembourg roots. Inspired by the society’s efforts to restore the lighthouse, Calteux offered to have a replica tower and lantern room built in appreciation for the U.S. servicemen who liberated Luxembourg during World War II. This generous gesture got the society scrambling to raise money, solicit volunteers, and draw up plans for a thorough restoration of the lighthouse. Fulfilling his promise, Calteux had the replica lantern and tower built in Luxembourg and then delivered to Port Washington in March of 2002. On October 7, 2007, a fourth-order Fresnel lens custom made by Artworks Florida was installed in the lantern room as the final piece in the restoration of the 1860 Port Washington Lighthouse.
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