WC-LIGHTHOUSES: August 2015

ERIE LAND LIGHTHOUSE-ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA

Erie Land Lighthouse in 1885
Photograph courtesy National Archives

Though Congress provided money for construction of the lighthouse in 1810 and 1811, the work was delayed by the outbreak of the War of 1812. A new allocation of $17,000 was made on March 3, 1817 for the construction of two lighthouses on Lake Erie, and Presque Isle Lighthouse and Buffalo Lighthouse were completed and commenced operation in 1818. These lights are considered the first American lighthouses built on the Great Lakes. The contract for the lighthouse called for a twenty-foot stone tower with a diameter of 9½ feet at its abase and 7½ feet at its top. Surmounting the tower was a nine-foot-tall iron lantern sheltering an array of ten lamps and reflectors. Thanks to the height of the bluff on which it stood, the lighthouse had a focal plane of ninety-three feet. Nearby, a one-story frame dwelling comprising three rooms was provided for the keeper. An inspection in 1851 found that the 1818 stone tower was starting to settle. Metal bands were placed around the tower to stabilize it, but by 1857 it was evident that the tower would have to be replaced. With a height of fifty-six feet, the replacement tower was more than twice as tall as its diminutive predecessor. A third-order Fresnel lens, called “a splendid affair” by the local paper, was installed in the tower’s lantern room. Powered by just a single lamp, this lens produced a fixed white light that was visible from a distance of thirteen miles. A new one-and-a-half-story brick dwelling with five rooms was also completed in 1858. After less than a decade of service, the new lighthouse was suffering from the same problem that had caused the demise of the first tower — a settling foundation — and frost had also contributed to cracks in its walls. The brick lighthouse was dismantled in 1866, and test borings made shortly thereafter revealed a layer of quicksand in the underlying soil that was the cause of the settling. When work commenced on a third lighthouse, plenty of attention was given to providing a proper foundation. The selected site, farther removed from the bluff’s edge, was excavated to a depth of twenty feet and then filled with eight layers of solid oak twelve-inch-square timbers. Atop the timers was placed six feet of crushed limestone set in Portland cement and several courses of stone also set in cement. Upon this massive foundation, a forty-nine-foot tower with a diameter of nineteen feet at its base and fourteen feet at its top was constructed using Berea sandstone. The basal diameter was more than twice that of the previous towers and helped to distribute the weight of the tower over a larger area. Six windows were incorporated into the tower: one at the base, one at the first landing, one at the second landing, and three with a semi-circular arch and keystone just below the gallery. Attached to the southern side of the tower is the oil room. The year of completion, 1867, is inscribed in decorative stonework above the lighthouse door. A third-order Fresnel, which produced a fixed white light, was used in the lantern room. After a new lighthouse was completed on the lake side of Presque Isle Peninsula in 1873, it took on the name of Presque Isle Lighthouse, and the old lighthouse on the bluff overlooking the harbor was renamed Erie Lighthouse, though locals referred to it as the Erie Land Lighthouse. Presque Isle Lighthouse reduced the usefulness of the bluff-top lighthouse, and in 1880 the Lighthouse Board decided Erie Lighthouse could be discontinued. The tower, minus its lantern, illuminating apparatus and iron stairs, which were removed and placed in storage at the lighthouse depot in Buffalo, was sold at public auction on March 1, 1881 along with the dwelling for $1,800 to Myron Sanford, owner of the surrounding land. Local citizens and mariners, who had long relied on the lighthouse, protested the decision, and on July 7, 1884, Congress provided $7,000 to re-establish the light. The property was promptly repurchased, and a custodian was paid to watch the site, which was “endangered by tramps,” until the lighthouse could be reactivated. Most of the metalwork was still in storage in Buffalo, but some pieces were missing or broken and had to be replaced. This unexpected work delayed the reactivation of the light until July 1, 1885, when the light from a new revolving third-order Fresnel was exhibited from the tower. In 1894, a supply of natural gas was piped from a nearby well to the keeper's dwelling, where it was used for fuel. George W. Miller was made the first keeper of the new light, transferring to Erie after sixteen years at Conneaut Lighthouse. Keeper Miller would serve until 1899, when the Erie Land Lighthouse lost its keepers for good. The lantern room was removed from the tower and transferred to Marblehead Lighthouse in Ohio, where it is still in use today.

PRESQUE ISLE NORTH PIERHEAD LIGHTHOUSE-ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA

PRESQUE ISLE LIGHTHOUSE-ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA

In 1870, plans were begun for a lighthouse on the north shore of the Presque Isle Peninsula that would replace Erie Land Lighthouse on the mainland. This new light would be several miles nearer the lake, and being located directly on the peninsula, would better mark that navigational hazard. Congress appropriated funds for its construction on June 10, 1872, and proposals were solicited for the necessary building materials. The lighthouse was originally going to be built of limestone, but when this provided to be too costly, bricks were used instead. Construction on the peninsula began in September of 1872, and the light from atop the forty-foot tower attached to the keeper’s dwelling was first exhibited on July 12, 1873. The walls of the lighthouse tower were built with five courses of brick in order to withstand the fierce storms and buffeting winds that blow off the lake. Though square on the outside, the tower is circular inside and supports a spiral staircase, forged in Pittsburgh and barged to Erie. The brick keeper’s dwelling originally had an oil room, bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and summer kitchen on the main floor, and three bedrooms and a drying room on the second floor. Beneath the dwelling were located a cistern and a cellar. The cost for the lighthouse was $15,000. In 1882, the tower was equipped with a revolving fourth-order Fresnel lens that alternately produced a red and white flash every ten seconds. Before this, the tower exhibited a fixed white light punctuated each minute by a red flash. As the other lighthouses at Erie displayed fixed lights, the locals often called Presque Isle Lighthouse the “flash light.” The old Erie Land Lighthouse was discontinued in 1880. To increase the range of the light, the height of the tower was increased seventeen feet, four inches in 1896 to produce a focal plane of seventy-three feet. When kerosene was adopted as the fuel for the light in 1898, an oil house was constructed near the northeast corner of the station to provide detached storage for the volatile liquid. A year later, the extended tower was painted white to provide a more prominent daymark for vessels on Lake Erie. n 1924, commercial electricity reached the lighthouse, and an oil-engine-driven generator was installed at the station in case of power failure. Presque Isle peninsula was set aside as a state park in 1921, and after the road to the peninsula was completed in 1927. The Fresnel lens atop the tower was replaced by a modern beacon in 1962.

FAIRPORT HARBOR LIGHTHOUSE-FAIRPORT, OHIO

In the fall of 1825, a fifty-five-foot-tall lighthouse and dwelling were completed and the fixed white light, fueled by whale oil, was exhibited for the first time. As one of only eight lighthouses on the Great Lakes, Fairport Lighthouse attracted a growing number of vessels to its port, and soon Fairport was known as a “sailor’s town,” rivaling the port of Cleveland. Unfortunately, only a few years after its construction, Fairport Harbor Lighthouse began to show signs of wear and tear, and after ten years the foundation had settled so much it required a complete replacement. Within thirty years, the lighthouse had to be encircled with wire hoops to keep it from toppling over. On March 3, 1869, Congress appropriated $30,000 for a new tower to replace the crumbling old one, and for a keeper's dwelling. A light was exhibited from a temporary tower on December 10, 1869, allowing the old tower to be taken down. Not wanting to repeat the original builders’ mistake, the new contractors hired engineers to determine the best possible foundation. This resulted in piles being driven into the ground and their heads capped with a foot-thick concrete slab. On top of that was placed a grillage of two courses of twelve-inch timbers followed by a limestone foundation that extended from ten feet below the ground to four feet above ground level. An act passed July 12, 1870 forced the suspension of the work and transferred the balance of the appropriation, roughly $9,000, to the treasury. At this time, twenty-nine courses of Brea sandstone had been set in the tower. On March 3, 1871, Congress provided $10,000 for finishing the tower and constructing the keeper's dwelling. The tower's walls had an outside diameter of nineteen feet nine inches at the base and thirteen feet four inches at the lantern room, while the brick-lined interior of the tower had a constant diameter of eight feet for the spiral stairway. A third-order Fresnel lens, manufactured by Henry-Lepaute and used in the original lighthouse, was transferred to the new tower. The redbrick, one-and-a-half-story dwelling was originally connected to the tower by an eighteen-foot-long covered passage. A fixed white light was shown from the new, sixty-eight-foot tower for the first time on August 11, 1871. Congress appropriated $42,000 on June 12, 1917 for a new combination light and fog station to be constructed on the west breakwater pierhead. However, due to World War I and a lack of additional funds, Completion of the lighthouse was delayed several years, and the new light did not become operational until June 9, 1925, when it replaced the light that had been shining on the hill overlooking the harbor for a hundred years. The next twenty years saw the slow deterioration of the defunct lighthouse. Near the end of World War II, town officials began a discussion of needed improvements to Fairport, and the suggestion was made to raze the dilapidated lighthouse. The town rallied to save the old lighthouse, founding the Fairport Harbor Historical Society, whose mission was to preserve and celebrate the town’s nautical heritage. The Society sought and received permission from the government to turn the lighthouse and keeper’s dwelling into a Marine Museum. Once news of the endeavor spread, donations from retired sailors and landlubbers alike soon came pouring in - old logbooks, sextants, photographs, pieces of historical vessels, compasses, and steering wheels. The museum, the country’s first lighthouse marine museum, opened in 1945. Visitors can now walk through the same space where runaway slaves once hid, gaze on historic photographs of the men who cared for the beacon, and read the log books of ships that were guided to safety by Fairport’s light.