Indiana may not spring to mind when you think about Great Lakes lighthouses, but visiting the Old Lighthouse Museum at Michigan City, Indiana, shows that there is lots to learn about Indiana's maritime history.
I've always liked this schoolhouse-style lighthouse and enjoyed the story of one of the Great Lakes' longest-serving female light keepers. It was a special treat to learn a spiral staircase installed since we last visited the museum allowed me to climb up into the lantern room to shoot a few photos of the surrounding harbor, although leaves on the trees obscured any view of the nearby pierhead light from that vantage point.
Michigan City sits at the southern end of Lake Michigan along Indiana's 45-mile-long coastline, and visionaries like city founder Isaac Elston saw potential in the area as a shipping port. Elston deeded land near the water to the government for a lighthouse in 1835.
The first light at Michigan City was a lantern on a post near the site of the present-day museum. A keepers' house and 40-foot light tower was at the site by 1837, and subsequent years saw construction of two piers at the harbor.
The first light keeper, Edmund B. Harrison, moved to the lighthouse in 1837 at a yearly salary of $350. James Towner became light keeper in 1841, and Harriet C. Towner (who one source identifies as Towner's wife) became light keeper in 1844.
Harriet Towner kept the light with her sister Abigail Coit, starting an unusual-for-the-time tradition of female light keepers and assistants at Michigan City.
John M. Clarkson became light keeper in 1853. Increased shipping in the area spurred calls for replacing the then-deteriorating light house with a new tower and brighter light during Clarkson's tenure.
The government came through with an $8,000 appropriation to replace the old light tower, reusing plans for other stations like the Grand Traverse Light in northwestern Michigan to save money.
The lighthouse, completed in 1858, featured Cream City brick walls (like Minnesota's Split Rock Lighthouse) and a two-story dwelling topped by a lantern room with a Fifth Order Fresnel lens visible up to 15 miles away.
Clarkson retired as light keeper in 1861, setting the stage for the arrival of one of the Great Lakes' most storied light keepers: Harriet Colfax.
Colfax was a music teacher who worked at her brother's Michigan City newspaper as a typesetter until failing health forced him to give up the paper. Colfax needed a job and lobbied to replace Clarkson as light keeper, perhaps enlisting the help of her cousin Schulyer Colfax (a then-U.S. Representative and future Vice President to Ulysses S. Grant).
Colfax became light keeper in 1861, serving in the position for an amazing 43 years. She weathered many changes at Michigan City, including assuming additional duties when extension of the piers and growing trees on the mainland hampering the original beacon's visibility made establishing a beacon further out on the piers necessary.
A beacon appeared on the east pier in 1871, accessible from the old lighthouse by a 1,500-foot-long elevated catwalk. I'll share the history of the pier beacons and the present-day pier lighthouse at Michigan City in a post later this week.
In 1904, workers moved the old lighthouse's lantern to a light tower on the east pier and Colfax retired as light keeper at the age of 80. Colfax died in 1905, within months of her retirement.
Keepers Thomas Armstrong, Philip Sheridan, and Walter Donovan followed Colfax.
The mainland lighthouse underwent remodeling and enlargement of the living quarters to accommodate keepers, assistant keepers, and their families who lived there until 1940. It was a private home and Coast Guard Auxiliary offices before becoming vacant. Vandalism, decay, and its declaration as surplus by the government in 1960 threatened the lighthouse's existence.
The city purchased it in 1963, and the Michigan City Historical Society began restoring the old lighthouse in 1965. In 1973, the group built a replica of the original lantern room atop the lighthouse (removed during the 1904 renovations) and reopened the building as a museum. The restored lighthouse earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
In 2003, members of the Hoosier Lighthousing Club built the skinny spiral staircase I climbed to reach the lantern room.
The lighthouse welcomes 5,000 to 6,000 visitors each year from April until October.
The museum has exhibits about the lighthouse and Great Lakes maritime history, as well as the lighthouse's original Fresnel lens. There is a small admission charge, and a small additional fee for access to the lantern room.
Check out Women and the Lakes: Untold Great Lakes Maritime Tales by Frederick Stonehouse and Women Who Kept the Lights: An Illustrated History of Female Lighthouse Keepers by Mary Louise Clifford and J. Candace Clifford to learn more about Harriet Colfax (both of these books have a chapter about Colfax).
Learn a bit more about Michigan City and its founding in Michigan City (Images of America) by Rose Anna Mueller.
© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved
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