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.