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.
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