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.