Viewing Ohio's Ashtabula Lighthouse

The Ashtabula Lighthouse's location at the end of a rocky breakwater and near a busy industrial harbor seems to give the little structure a feeling of vulnerability, but a look at its history shows that the light is definitely a strong survivor.

The Ashtabula Lighthouse on Lake Erie in eastern Ohio is actually one of several that have served Ashtabula's harbor over the years.

The first Ashtabula light appeared in 1836, eventually making way for a newer lighthouse with the construction of new docks in 1876. Widening of the Ashtabula River mouth and a new breakwater led to constructing a third lighthouse in 1905.

A ramp connected the earliest lighthouse to a pier, but construction and river widening meant light keepers had to live on shore and take a boat out to the lighthouse in order to operate and maintain it.

We saw the old keepers' house when we visited Ashtabula's Point Park. Today, it houses the Ashtabula Marine Museum.

In 1916, workers moved the lighthouse 1,750 feet northeast, expanded it and extended the breakwater. The lighthouse now had a 50-foot concrete crib supporting it and, at double its previous size, had room for on-site keepers' quarters.

The 1920s were particularly eventful years at the lighthouse.

A Canadian Steamship Lines boat, the Gleneagles, rammed the lighthouse in 1927. The collision pushed the lighthouse back six inches without much structural damage, but the heavily damaged ship didn't fare as well.

The next year, an ice storm coated the lighthouse in ice, trapping two keepers inside for two days. The men had to thaw the front door and then hack their way through five feet of ice to get out.

Automated equipment replaced lighthouse keepers at Ashtabula Lighthouse, the last manned lighthouse on Lake Erie, in 1973.

If you read Tuesday's story about Ashtabula's Point Park and the city's heavily industrial waterfront, you may still be wondering if we ever got a decent view of the Ashtabula Lighthouse.

We looked through a maze of coal, boatyards and a huge coal conveyor to barely catch a glimpse of the squat little lighthouse from Point Park's elevated location over the harbor area.

Driving around the city's waterfront area, we found Walnut Beach. This free, city-owned park does offer a more picturesque view of the lighthouse, especially if you're willing to walk a ways from the public beach down the fairly rugged breakwater.

We walked a quarter-mile or so down the breakwater, but we didn't get too close to the lighthouse as the wind started to pick up a bit, and the walkway became rockier and rockier. Still, the photos we got were a bit nicer than the shots we got in between the industrial equipment and black coal mounds from the Point Park vantage point.

The Ashtabula Lighthouse Restoration and Preservation Society currently owns the light station, and work continues as the group repairs and restores the lighthouse with an eventual goal of offering public tours. This isn't an easy project as a local newspaper article in 2007 about the transfer of ownership from the government to the group quoted society members as estimating the process would take five years and have an estimated $1 million price tag.

© Dominique King 2009

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Comments

[gypsyscarlett]

Oh, the photos are utterly gorgeous! :)

[Dominique]

Gypsy-I loved that we were able to get a nicer view from Walnut Beach. It would be great if the preservation group ever is able to go through with plans to offer boat tours out to the lighthouse, but it sounds as if that will be at least several years away yet.

[Roger Barker]

Another great blog post! It's great that you were able to take - and share - such wonderful photos.

[Dominique]

Roger-Thanks! I'm glad we were able to get as close as we did for these photos (that and a longer lens helped a bit).
I'd love to see the preservation group get boat tours going out to the light, but it sounds like a tough project to finance. I remember reading that lighthouses you have to take a boat ride to tour draw far fewer visitors, on average, than lighthouses that do not require boat rides--so making money once you've started the tours is a little more difficult I'd guess.
They seem to do well enough with tours of the Copper Harbor in Michigan's UP in the summer--it was about a 10-minute boat ride out to the point, but there were grounds you could walk around out there. http://www.midwestguest.com/2009/07/keweenaw-history-comes-alive-at-copper-harbor-lighthouse.html
The lighthouse at Toledo Harbor also faces similar issues in wanting to make their lighthouse more accessible via boat. They're working to offer boat tours out there, but I suspect that will be a few years off as well. http://www.midwestguest.com/2009/07/toledo-harbor-lighthouse-still-stands-guard-at-maumee-bay.html