(Note: Quality of photographs were greatly weather affected by continuous rain while taking the photographs.)
Monday, May 25, 2015
MANITOWOC BREAKWATER LIGHTHOUSE-MANITOWOC, WISCONSIN
(Note: Quality of photographs were greatly weather affected by continuous rain while taking the photographs.)
PORT WASHINGTON BREAKWATER LIGHTHOUSE-PORT WASHINGTON, WISCONSIN
(Note: Quality of photographs were greatly weather affected by continuous rain while taking the photographs.)
KEVICH LIGHTHOUSE-WISCONSIN
Congress appropriated $3,500 for a lighthouse at Port Ulao on September 28, 1850, and then in lieu of this, allocated $1,000 for a “small beacon light on or near the pier at Port Ulao” on August 3, 1854. This beacon light was never constructed, and it wasn’t long before steamers stopped burning wood, and Port Ulao, which was never much more than a pier, was abandoned. Amazingly, it seems Port Ulao, now part of Grafton, was destined to have a lighthouse. In 1981, Brana Kevich, an ordained Serbian Orthodox priest, and his wife Neva built a lighthouse home on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan to fulfill a personal quest to own and live in a lighthouse. The lighthouse, known as Kevich Lighthouse, stands just fifty-feet-tall, but has a focal plane of 163 feet, giving it the distinction of having the highest focal plane of any active lighthouse on the Great Lakes – only Boyer Bluff Light is higher. The U.S. Coast Guard certified Kevich Lighthouse as a Class II Private Aid to Navigation in 1990. Two metal halide lamps, a 400-watt lamp mounted above a 1,000-watt lamp, were serving as the light source for Kevich Lighthouse in 2006. A shield rotates around the lamps once every eight seconds, creating a signature of four seconds of light followed by four seconds of darkness.
MILWAUKEE BREAKWATER LIGHTHOUSE-MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
MILWAUKEE PIERHEAD LIGHTHOUSE-MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
Notice the Milwaukee Breakwater lighthouse in background.
(Note: Quality of photographs were greatly weather affected by continuous rain while taking the photographs.)
WIND POINT LIGHTHOUSE-WISCONSIN
Wind Point lighthouse 1884
Aerial view of the station in 1947
Photograph courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard
In 1870, the Lighthouse Board petitioned Congress for $40,000 to construct a lighthouse and fog signal on Racine Point, located three-and-a-half miles north of Racine and eighteen miles south of Milwaukee. A lighthouse had been established at Racine in 1835, but this light was shut out by Racine Point for vessels approaching Racine from the north. The Lighthouse Board felt that a lighthouse on Racine Point could help mariners avoid Racine Reef, which lies well offshore, and would allow the light at Racine to be discontinued. The Lighthouse Board repeated its request each year until Congress finally appropriated $40,000 in 1878 for building a lake-coast lighthouse and fog signal on Racine Point. Once the structures were completed, the Lighthouse Service records started referring to the station as Wind Point instead of Racine Point. Wind Point was supposedly named after a tall, windblown tree on the point that was a familiar landmark for mariners on Lake Michigan. The tree was appropriately replaced by a tall lighthouse that proved to be even more beneficial to mariners. In May of 1879, a lot on Wind Point measuring 295 by 292.5 feet was purchased for $1,000 along with a 33 by 628 foot right-of-way to the public highway. Also that year plans for the station were submitted and approved, and duplicate fog whistles were ordered. Built of brick with an inner and outer wall, Wind Point Lighthouse gradually tapers from a diameter of twenty-two feet at its base to twelve feet eight inches at its lantern. The tower stands atop a ten-foot-deep stone foundation and measures 110 feet three inches from its base to the ventilator ball atop its lantern room. The tower features two distinctive architectural embellishments found in many of the tall towers on the Great Lakes: masonry gallery support corbels and arch-topped windows. A spiral cast-iron staircase, with 144 steps and five landings, winds up the inside of the tower to the watchroom and lantern room, which are each encircled by a gallery. The ten-sided lantern room originally housed a third-order Fresnel lens manufactured by Barbier & Fenestre in Paris, France. This lens, which is now on display at the lighthouse, has twelve flash panels and revolved once in six minutes to produce a six-second flash every thirty seconds. The lens rested atop sixteen ball bearings and was rotated by a clockwork mechanism powered by a weight suspended in a drop tube located between the inner and outer walls of the tower. The tower is attached via a twenty-two-foot-long covered way to the brick keepers’ dwelling. Besides, the lighthouse, the station was also originally equipped with ten-inch steam fog whistles in duplicate. The light and fog signal were placed in operation on November 15, 1880. A circular iron oil house was erected on the station grounds in 1894 to store the volatile kerosene oil used for the light. The current concrete oil house was built in 1910. A brick fog signal building was constructed in 1900 to house duplicate, compressed-air sirens. Two years later, two automatic Brown sirens, with copper trumpets were installed, and one of the two old wooden fog signal buildings was moved to the southwest part of the lot and converted into a woodshed. The characteristic of the fog signal was changed in 1906 from a three-second blast separated by twenty-seven seconds of silence, to a three-second blast separated by fifty-seven seconds of silence. On December 5, 1923, Wind Point Lighthouse became just the second light on the Great Lakes to be electrified when a 300-watt light bulb was placed inside the Fresnel lens. The lens was replaced with a DCB-24 aerobeacon in 1964, when the station was automated and de-staffed. The lens was given to the Racine Historical Museum (now the Racine Heritage Museum), the fog signal was discontinued, and the station buildings were leased to the Village of Wind Point. in 2007, the DCB-24R aerobeacon failed and was replaced by a VRB-25 lens. This change led to complaints by boaters in the area who felt the new light was too weak. Letters were sent to the Coast Guard by the City of Racine Harbor Commission, the State of Wisconsin Waterways Commission, the Racine County Sheriff’s Department, and the Village of Wind Point, asking that the intensity of the light be increased and that the false flashes produced by the new beacon be eliminated. After nearly three years of dialogue, the Coast Guard addressed the complaints by replacing the beacons thirty-five-watt bulb with a 100-watt bulb and adding screens to the western windows in the lantern room to eliminate the extra flashes.
RACINE BREAKWATER LIGHTHOUSE-RACINE, WISCONSIN
Racine Pierhead Light on south shore in 1914-Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard
In 1901, the Lighthouse Board decided the old Racine Harbor Lighthouse should be discontinued, and its fourth-order Fresnel lens placed in a new metal tower to be erected at the end of the north pier. After a concrete foundation was created on the pierhead, a skeletal steel tower was put in place and first lighted on November 23, 1901. The twelve-foot-square, enclosed portion of the tower was lined with wood and stood seventeen-and-a-half feet above the pier, while the entire structure measured forty-five feet nine inches from base to ventilator ball. A 960-foot-long elevated walkway provided access to the tower, which was initially painted white, save its black lantern room. This new light and the breakwater light could be aligned for entering the harbor. A 1,500-pound fog bell was mounted on brackets attached to the eastern face of the metal tower. The machinery for striking the bell was housed in the lower floor of the tower, from where a fourteen-inch galvanized iron weight drop tube extended down to the pier. In 1904, the post light on the breakwater was covered in metalwork to create a hexagonal pyramidal tower that resembled an inverted funnel. The light from this structure commenced operation on December 23, 1904. While the detached breakwater at Racine improved conditions in the harbor somewhat, vessels moored there were still tossed about during storms. On March 3, 1907, Congress adopted a project to create arrowhead breakwaters at Racine by extending the detached breakwater to the shore and constructing a southern breakwater. The piers would then be removed so that waves entering the breakwaters could expand within the entire enclosed area. Extension of the northern breakwater began in 1907, but the southern breakwater was deferred until it was determined if it would still be needed after the northern breakwater was completed. In 1912, the northern breakwater finally reached the shore. The square, metal tower was removed from the north pier and installed near the outer end of the south pier, where it started showing a white flashing light on May 29, 1912. In 1916, bids were invited for constructing the southern breakwater and removing the south pier. 1,515 feet of the breakwater were completed by 1919, but due to the effects of war, the removal of the south pier and the construction of the pile pier to connect the south breakwater to shore were temporarily deferred. An acetylene light was established atop a thirty-one-a-half-foot standard steel tower on the outer end of the southern breakwater in 1918. Bids for completing the southern breakwater were received in 1922, and the work began early in 1923. The square metal tower was transferred from the south pier to the breakwater in 1924 and an air diaphone fog signall was installed. When the square, metal breakwater light was discontinued in 1987, the citizens of Racine fought to keep the structure from being razed. This tower has been floodlit at night, but a metal pole now serves as the official light for the north breakwater.
(Note: Quality of photographs were greatly weather affected by continuous rain while taking the photographs.)
KENOSHA PIERHEAD LIGHTHOUSE-KENOSHA, WISCONSIN
(Note: Quality of photographs were greatly weather affected by continuous rain while taking the photographs.)
KENOSHA LIGHTHOUSE-KENOSHA, WISCONSIN
The original tower was built in 1948, however the bricks used in the 1848 tower were too soft, and a replacement tower had to be built in 1858. This cylindrical structure had a diameter of eight feet, stood fifty feet tall, and was constructed with an outer wall with a thickness of roughly a foot-and-a-half and an inner wall that was eight inches thick. The tower’s ten-sided lantern room housed a fifth-order Fresnel lens that produced a flash of white light every ninety seconds. A brick, one-and-a-half-story keeper’s dwelling was also built in 1858 along with a storeroom located between the tower and dwelling. The Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board for 1865 noted that the inner wall of the lighthouse at Kenosha was “literally crumbling to pieces,” and the outer wall showed “several cracks, caused by the action of the frost.” After Congress appropriated $4,000, the 1858 lighthouse was torn down in 1866, and the present brick tower was erected in its stead, using many of the materials from the old tower. A beacon, erected on a pier at Kenosha earlier that year, was fitted with a fourth-order lens to serve as the main light at Kenosha until the new lighthouse was completed and the lens was transferred to it in time to be exhibited at the opening of navigation in 1867. A companion brick dwelling was completed in 1867, and the lighthouse lot was covered with soil, brought in from the mainland, to combat the shifting sand on the island. The lighthouse was discontinued for a week in 1888, and then in 1893 its signature was changed from a fixed white light varied by a white flash every ninety seconds, to a fixed white light varied by a white flash every forty five seconds through the addition of a flash panel to its lens. On May 23, 1906, Kenosha Lighthouse was permanently discontinued, and its fourth-order lens was transferred to a cylindrical metal tower recently erected on the nearby north pier. The dwelling and grounds of the Kenosha Light Station were retained for use in connection with the Kenosha pierhead and breakwater lights, and in 1908 a redbrick addition was made to the north side of the dwelling to create a duplex for the keepers. The lantern room was removed from the inactive tower in 1913, and a twenty-five-foot-tall mast was erected atop the capped tower for displaying weather and storm warning signals. The Coast Guard left Kenosha Light Station in 1940, following the automation of the breakwater and pierhead lights. After standing vacant for over a decade, the station was going to be razed, but local residents convinced the government to transfer the property to the City of Kenosha in 1955. The city and the Kenosha County Historical Society initiated a restoration of the station in 1991, after the was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. A grant of $18,675 was used in 1992 to repaint the tower, chemically clean it, and repaint its metal stairway. A $15,000 matching grant from the state allowed a replica lantern room to be fabricated and then installed atop the tower on May 7, 1994. During Fourth of July celebrations two years later, a beacon was activated inside the lantern room, but this light does not function as a navigational aid.
GROSSE POINT LIGHTHOUSE-EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
The twenty-five-foot bluff on which the lighthouse was built had been known as Grosse Point (great point) since French fur trappers frequented the area in the seventeenth century. Explorer and Jesuit Missionary Jacques Marquette recorded camping on “Grosse Pointe” on December 3 during his 1674 expedition to what would become Chicago. On the night of September 7, 1860, the Lady Elgin was northbound from Chicago carrying Irish Union Guards returning to Milwaukee after hearing a campaign speech by Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in the presidential election. When off Grosse Point, the Lady Elgin was rammed just aft of its side paddlewheel by the lumber-laden schooner Augusta, and within twenty minutes, the steamship had split apart and sunk. When day broke, many of the surviving passengers and crew were drifting in stormy waters, clinging to pieces of the wreckage. Students from nearby Northwestern University gathered on the shore, scanning the water for signs of life. One student, Edward W. Spencer, rescued seventeen people before collapsing from overexertion and exposure, and a plaque honoring his effort can be seen in the Northwestern University Library. Nearly 300 lives were lost with the sinking of the Lady Elgin, making it the worst maritime disaster on the Great Lakes up to that time. Other shipwrecks occurred off Grosse Point during the next decade, spurring the residents of Evanston to petition Congress for a lighthouse. In 1871, Congress appropriated $35,000 for a lighthouse on Grosse Point, and a 100 by 550-foot site was purchased for $1,200. Orlando Metcalfe Poe was appointed Chief Engineer of the Upper Great Lakes Lighthouse District in 1870, and in this capacity designed many of the tall, graceful brick towers that adorn the Great Lakes. Poe drew up plans and specifications for Grosse Point Lighthouse in 1872, and after proposals for the construction of the station were solicited by advertisement, they were opened on August 13, 1872. The lowest bid was accepted, and the excavation for the foundations of the tower, covered way, and dwelling commenced in September. By the end of the working season in November, the stonework of the dwelling had been brought up to ground level. Work resumed the following April, and over a two-month period the brickwork of the dwelling was nearly completed and ninety-one piles were driven to a depth of fifteen feet and overlaid by a four-foot-thick concrete footing to support the tower. By the end of June, the passageway, the stonework for the tower’s foundation, and the outside of the dwelling were nearly completed. During the rest of the year, the 113-foot-tall brick tower, which tapers from a diameter of twenty-two feet at its base to thirteen feet three inches at the parapet, gradually rose above the attached dwelling. A second-order Fresnel lens, manufactured in Paris by Henry-Lepaute, was installed in the lantern room, and the light was activated on March 1, 1874. Three panels of red glass were slowly rotated around the fixed lens by a clockwork mechanism powered by a sixty-pound weight that was suspended within the tower’s double walls. The light’s characteristic was fixed white, varied by a ten-second red flash every three minutes. A second-order Fresnel lens is the largest size every used on the Great Lakes, and Grosse Point’s second order lens was the first one installed on the lakes and the only one that remains active today. Due to deterioration of the bricks used to construct the lighthouse, scaffolding was erected around the tower in 1914, and it was encased in reinforced concrete at a cost of $2,679. In 1934, the station was electrified, and the fog signal was discontinued. These actions allowed the light to be operated by a photoelectric cell, and the last keeper left the station in 1935. ). Reactivated (inactive 1941-1946, now privately maintained); focal plane 119 ft (36 m); 2 white flashes every 15 s. 113 ft (34 m).
Newly finished Grosse point Lighthouse-Photograph courtesy of National Archives
Photograph courtesy National Archives
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