It is difficult to imagine the winter-white, wind-whipped landscape at Eagle Harbor while looking at my photos of the lighthouse taken on sunny day with a calm Lake Superior in the background, isn't it?
Weather did the first light station at this location in, but this sturdy brick version still stands tall against some of Michigan's most extreme winter weather more than 140 years after its construction.
Congress first approved $4,000 to build a lighthouse at the harbor in 1849 in response to the lobbying of copper mining interests in the area. The first station, featuring a square, white wooden tower attached to a rubble stone keeper's residence was in place by 1851, but it quickly deteriorated in the face of severe winters.
An inspection of the lighthouse in 1868 found it barely functional and led to a recommendation to raze it and build a sturdier light tower and keeper's dwelling. Increased traffic due to the opening of the Soo Locks in 1855 and the shallow, rocky harbor at the station made the need for a new lighthouse increasingly important.
Congress appropriated the $14,000 necessary to replace the Eagle Harbor lighthouse in 1870. Construction of a new channel at the harbor and the approval of money for new range lights at Eagle Harbor also helped augment the effectiveness of the brick lighthouse constructed in 1871.
Workers moved the original lighthouse's Fresnel lens to the new tower and demolished the old structure.
The newer lighthouse tower rose 44 feet above the shoreline. The tower walls consisted of an inner circular wall four inches thick and eight feet in diameter, encircled by an outer, octagonal wall and topped by a cast-iron lantern room.
The two-story attached keeper's home had four bedrooms, a parlor, a kitchen and one closet. The keeper could access the tower from either floor, and steel doors separated the tower from the house to help prevent the possibility of fire spreading to the house from the light tower.
Wicked weather at the light station caused dangerously low visibility at the harbor, especially during the autumn and winter with the area's strong gales and blinding snowstorms. Congress accordingly approved the construction of a fog signal at Eagle Harbor in 1893 and finally approved the money for its construction in 1895.
The addition of a fog signal meant the Eagle Harbor light station needed at least two keepers, although the assistant keepers had to live elsewhere in the village until the later addition of housing at the light station for the assistants in the 1930s.
In 1918, Eagle Harbor became one of the earliest light stations to host a US Navy radio compass transmitter, and the Navy built two more buildings to house equipment and a life saving crew assigned to the station.
Notable changes at the Eagle Harbor light station over the years included painting the sides of the tower facing the lake white in response to complaints of its low visibility against grey skies in the daytime in 1925, electrification of the light in 1930, replacing the original Fresnel lens with a modern aero-style beacon in 1962, and automation of the light in the early 1980s.
The Keweenaw County Historical Society assumed temporary stewardship of the light station campus and its buildings in 1982 and began restoring and furnishing the keeper's dwellings to a turn-of-the-twentieth-century appearance.
The Society established small museums throughout the campus, including: a Keweenaw history museum in an old Coast Guard garage; a Commercial Fishing Museum in one of the old assistant keepers' dwellings; and a Maritime Museum in the fog signal building.
The society assumed ownership of the Eagle Harbor light station in 1999, although the US Coast Guard continues to maintain the light at the top of the tower.
Eagle Harbor, like a lot of Great Lakes lighthouses I've read about, supposedly has its ghosts. Check out this report from one member of the Coast Guard stationed at Eagle Harbor in the 1970s relating numerous unnerving experiences with the station's unearthly presences over his three-year assignment at the light station.
The grounds are open year round. You can tour the museums and light keepers' dwelling during the summer and early autumn. If you're really adventurous, you might want to rent an assistant light keepers' dwelling and see if you have the same ghostly experiences related by the uneasy Coast Guard light keeper.
© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved
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