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.