SAGINAW RIVER REAR RANGE LIGHTHOUSE-ESSEXVILLE, MICHIGAN

                                                                                                Aerial view of Saginaw Coast Guard Station circa 1965
                                                                                                       Photograph courtesy of Archives of Michigan

                                                                                               Rear Range Light In 1904
                                                                                  Photograph Courtesy of  National Archives

LUDINGTON NORTH PIERHEAD LIGHTHOUSE-LUDINGTON, MICHIGAN

                                                                                  BREAKWATER LIGHTHOUSE IN 1935
                                                                     PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF U.S. COAST GUARD

MUSKEGON SOUTH BREAKWATER LIGHTHOUSE-MUSKEGON, MICHIGAN

                                                                                                Aerial view of Muskegon Harbor showing various lights.
                                                                                                         Photograph courtesy Archives of Michigan

MUSKEGON SOUTH PIERHEAD LIGHT-MUSKEGON, MICHIGAN

CHICAGO HARBOR LIGHTHOUSE-CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

CHICAGO HARBOR SOUTHEAST GUIDEWALL LIGHTHOUSE-CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

To comply with a 1930 Supreme Court order that limited the amount of water allowed to flow from Lake Michigan into the Chicago River, a set of locks was built at the river’s entrance between 1936 and 1938. It was at this time that the Chicago Harbor Southeast Guidewall was built, and the present tower was established at its eastern end in 1938. The Sanitary District of Chicago awarded a construction contract for the lock and guidewalls to the Frazier-Davis Construction Company. The lock and appurtenant structures were built under a War Department permit to prevent the reversal of the river into the lake during periods of heavy rains. The Chicago River was reversed in 1900 to flow into the Sanitary and Ship Canal and then eventually into the Mississippi River. This reversal separated the city’s Lake Michigan drinking water supply from the sewage effluent in the Chicago River and helped prevent cholera/typhoid epidemics. The Southeast Guidewall Light was described in 1938 as "a white steel tower, the upper part of which is inclosed, surmounted by a fourth order vertical bar lantern housing the lens. The light is occulting, showing a white light of 6,600 c.p., 1 seconds in duration every 2 seconds. The fog bell is mounted on a bracket attached to the lake side of the tower and sounds a single stroked at 10-second intervals." Also in 1938, a light was established on the west end of the south guidewall and on the east end of the north guide wall. These two additional aids were thirty-one-foot-tall skeleton steel towers. The north guidewall tower was painted a straw color and showed a flashing red light while the inner south guidewall tower was white and exhibited a flashing white light. The Chicago Harbor Lock opens around 10,000 times each year, making it the second busiest lock in the country. Over 50,000 vessels, carrying around 900,000 passengers, pass through the lock annually.

WISCONSIN POINT (SUPERIOR ENTRY BREAKWATER) LIGHTHOUSE-SUPERIOR, WISCONSIN

                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                          Superior Entry Lighthouse with fog trumpets in 1915
                                                                                 (Photograph courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard)

Superior Bay is a natural harbor in the northwest corner of Lake Superior that is fed by the St. Louis River and empties into the lake through a natural opening, known as Superior Entry, which is bounded by Minnesota Point and Wisconsin Point. Together, these two points create the longest freshwater sandbar in the world. On June 30, 1906, Congress appropriated $20,000 for range lights to mark the new south pier, after the old ones were washed away in 1905. But, after this appropriation, the Superior Entry project was expanded to include not only new parallel piers but also two converging breakwaters to protect the entrance. The Lighthouse Board requested an additional $25,000 to cover a light and fog signal on the southern breakwater, and three non-attended acetylene beacons to mark the piers and northern breakwater. Congress provided this amount on March 4, 1911, and work on the new lighthouse commenced that fall. The Superior Entry Lighthouse went into commission on October 10, 1912 at the outer end of the southern breakwater. This two-story structure is oval in plan and situated on a concrete pier that rises eleven and a half feet above the concrete breakwater. The circular tower rises from the outer end of the lighthouse, and is surmounted by a cast-iron deck and fourth-order helical bar lantern, from which an occulting white light was exhibited by a fourth-order, Sautter, Lemonier, & Cie. Drum lens at a focal plane of seventy feet. A clockwork mechanism, powered by a seventy-five pound weight that was suspended in a drop tube and had to be wound up every four hours, revolved a screen inside the lens to produce the light’s characteristic: five seconds of light, followed by five seconds of eclipse. The concrete pier underneath the lighthouse provided storage for oil, paints, gasoline, and water. The first story of the lighthouse, also of concrete, housed the twenty-two horsepower air compressors and tanks, a heating plant, a bathroom, and cold storage room. The lighthouse’s second story, made of wood, contained a kitchen, living room, three bedrooms, and a bathroom. An additional assistant was authorized for the station, after a fourth light besides the main light on the south breakwater was established at Superior Entry. These four lights were a fifty-foot skeletal tower on the north breakwater, a twenty-five foot skeletal tower on the north pier, a twenty-five foot skeletal tower on the south pier, and a light on the inner end of the south pier. A radio beacon was established at Superior Entry in 1938. The station was automated in 1970, when a DCB aerobeacon was installed in the lantern room. On May 1, 2013, the General Services Administration announced that the Wisconsin Point Lighthouse was excess to the needs of the Coast Guard and was “being made available at no cost to eligible entities defined as federal agencies, state and local agencies, and other non-profit, historic, or community purposes.

SPLIT ROCK LIGHTHOUSE-MINNESOTA

During the early-morning hours of November 28, 1905, the 478-foot William Edenborn was towing the 436-foot barge Madeira along the western shore of Lake Superior, in winds of seventy to eighty miles per hour, when the towline parted. The Madeira crashed onto the craggy shores of Gold Island, near present-day Split Rock Lighthouse, and nine of its crew of ten made it safely ashore. The Edenborn was driven into the mouth of Split Rock River, a few miles to the south, where she broke in two and lost one of her crewmembers. Twenty-nine vessels were destroyed or damaged and thirty-six seamen lost their lives in the storm, which was named Mataffa after a freighter that wrecked near Duluth that day. In January 1907, J.H. Sheadle, vice president of The Lake Carriers' Association, wrote the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, urging the construction of a lighthouse near Split Rock. "A lighthouse of the second order, with fog-signal attachment, to be erected on the north shore of Lake Superior, in the vicinity of Split Rock, Minnesota, preferably on Carborundum Point, lying about half a mile north of Split Rock. There is at present no light-house on the north shore of Lake Superior between Grand Marais and Two Harbors, and it is extremely difficult to locate Two Harbors in a fog or storm, owing to the uncertain variation of the compass on the north shore of Lake Superior, due to the vast metallic deposits in that vicinity, and also owing to the dangerous character of the coast all along the north shore. During the past two years there have been disasters in this vicinity amounting to over $2,000,000, the total loss of the steamer Lafayette, the barge Madeira, the steamer Spencer, and the barge Pennington, and serious damage to the steamer Edenborn, the barge Manila, the steamer George W. Peavey, and others. It is the experience and opinion of masters that this is the natural place to make a landfall in approaching the head of Lake Superior, and a good light and a good fog signal at that point would greatly enhance the safety of navigation in all weathers at the head of the lake." On March 4, 1907, $75,000 was appropriated for a light and fog signal near Split Rock. Split Rock Lighthouse was designed by Ralph Russell Tinkham, and construction of the station, atop the 130- foot cliff, started in June of 1909. Excellent progress had been made when work was suspended for the season on November 21. Work resumed on May 1, 1910, and the light was put into commission on July 31, 1910. The station consisted of an octagonal brick tower, built around a steel framework, a brick fog signal house, an oil storage building, and three two-story brick dwellings, each with a small frame barn behind it. The fifty-four-foot-tall lighthouse employed a clockwork mechanism, driven by 250-pound weights, to revolve a third-order, bi-valve Fresnel lens, manufactured in Paris by Barbier, Bénard & Turenne. The lens produced a white flash every ten seconds, at a focal plane of 168 feet above mean lake level, using a 55-millimeter double-tank incandescent oil vapor lamp. The fog signal originally consisted of duplicate six-inch sirens excited by air compressed by a twenty-two horsepower gasoline engine. The station’s oil vapor light was replaced with a 1000-watt electric light in 1940, and the station’s other buildings were wired for electricity. The fog signal was discontinued in 1961, and by January 1, 1969, the light had been decommissioned, and the station was handed over to the General Services Administration for disposal.