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.