Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

by

This story is part of our series on Lake Superior lighthouses.

“The largest and finest collection of lighthouses in the United States.”

Historian F. Ross Holland doesn’t mince words about the treasures on Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands – six Lake Superior island outposts, with eight towers between them, in one of the world’s most beautiful settings.

Each is unique: the elegant brick tower on Outer Island’s bluffs, the tall cast-iron cylinder atop the Devils Island sea caves, a stately mansion on Raspberry, two towers each on Long and Michigan islands, and a brownstone gem on Sand Island.

For more than a century, these light stations were home to men and women who endured the privations of island life to provide mariners with reliable beacons to guide them on the waters of Lake Superior. The keepers and their families are gone now, replaced by solar panels and automatic bulb-changers, but visitors can tour their dwellings and climb the towers, preserved today within a national park.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Courtesy National Park Service

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Island-goers, or perhaps a keeper and his wife, await water transportation at Raspberry Island in this 1901 photo.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Courtesy National Park Service

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

The tracks pictured here in the early 1900s once moved goods to the keeper’s house on Devils Island.

In the beginning …

The story of these lighthouses mirrors the development of commerce on Lake Superior. When the Sault Ste. Marie locks opened in 1855, authorities realized that increased shipping would need navigational lights. Among the highest priorities for a beacon was the La Pointe harbor on Madeline Island. The only town of any size on the lake’s western end, the old fur post was a natural destination.

Quite a bit of discussion went into deciding exactly where to put the beacon. The port was on the landward side of Madeline Island so it would not make much sense to put the light at the harbor entrance. Such a light would not be visible until ships were right in front of it, well past all surrounding hazards. Much better, everyone agreed, to put the light across the channel on Long Island, where it would be visible well out on the open lake.

Everyone agreed, that is, except Abraham Smolk, the mid-level Lighthouse Service official supervising regional construction. Smolk arrived at La Pointe, took a quick look around and impulsively decided the best to place for the new lighthouse was Michigan Island, 17 miles north of the specified site. The contractor protested – erecting a tower on the Michigan Island clifftop would be far more costly than on Long Island’s flat sand.

But Smolk held firm, and the Apostles’ first lighthouse went up on Michigan Island: a small stone tower, with keeper’s dwelling attached. Construction finished in October 1856, and the lighthouse entered service the following June. Just about immediately, everyone realized it was in the wrong place. Dangerous shoals lay north of Michigan Island, but the low tower at the island’s south end gave seamen no warning of the shoals’ proximity. Abraham Smolk had no business changing the plans, his superiors thundered. Repudiating his instructions, they ordered builders to go back and put the lighthouse on Long Island … at the builders’ expense.

The contractors protested, but to no avail. On the brink of bankruptcy, they went back to Long Island and threw together a wooden lighthouse, as quickly and as cheaply as they could. This lighthouse served well enough for nearly 40 years; then in 1897, with traffic booming at the nearby port of Ashland, the government replaced it with a pair of cast-iron towers spaced about mile apart. One, the “New La Pointe” tower, remains in service today; the other at the island’s tip stands empty, supplanted by a steel cylinder in 1987.

And the misbegotten lighthouse on Michigan Island? Stripped of its fittings, the building sat vacant for 12 years. Then, as traffic increased, the Lighthouse Service decided an extra light might be useful after all. Workers repaired a decade’s neglect, and the lighthouse resumed operation in 1869.

The little lighthouse was never completely satisfactory as a guide for shipping, though. Abraham Smolk’s rash decision continued to haunt the Lighthouse Service. Several ships ran aground off Michigan Island, and for years maritime interests pressed the government to remedy the problem. Finally in 1929, the Lighthouse Service erected a second tower on Michigan Island, nearly twice the height of the original.

The new Michigan tower was not new at all; the tall cast-iron tube had been built alongside Pennsylvania’s Delaware River in 1880. When dredging straightened the Delaware, the government found itself with a spare lighthouse. Today, two towers stand side-by-side on the island: one still active, its older companion empty of all but memories.

By 1862, with lighthouses at Long and Michigan islands, the eastern approach to the ports of Chequamegon Bay was well-marked. In that year, the Lighthouse Service installed a beacon on Raspberry Island to mark the western route. Like the La Pointe light, it was a “schoolhouse-style” structure, a wood building with a lantern room mounted on top.

This two-bedroom house may have been satisfactory for a single keeper and his family, but eventually the need for additional room became acute. In 1887, keeper Francis Jacker left his large family at their mainland home. Tending the light without help was exhausting, and in a letter, Jacker worried prophetically, “In case of an emergency, no assistance is available on the island.”

In September that year, Jacker’s fears were realized while moving the station’s sailboat to shelter in the face of a rising gale. Blown off-course, he was driven onto uninhabited Oak Island, his boat wrecked by the surf. With neither assistant keeper nor family on Raspberry Island to notice his absence, he faced certain death by starvation or exposure. Providentially, after his ordeal of three days, his wife decided to pay him an impromptu visit. Dismayed to find the lighthouse empty, she organized a successful search.

After that incident, the service authorized an assistant keeper at Raspberry Island. At the turn of the 20th century, the island’s population increased again when the agency added a fog signal to the station’s arsenal. State-of-the-art foghorns were powered then by steam, and a second assistant keeper was hired to help with firing the boiler and tending machinery. The original lighthouse, bursting at its seams, was remodeled to provide separate apartments for each keeper. Some modern observers comment that the result looks more like a country manor than a lighthouse.

The next wave …

The three earliest lights had been sited to guide ships through the Apostle Islands, but in the years after the Civil War, more and more captains set courses to bypass the archipelago completely. In the 1870s, Duluth, Minnesota, emerged as a major shipping center; now lights were needed on the outer ring of islands to guide sailors heading farther west.

In 1874, the first of this new group was built, appropriately enough, on Outer Island. The conical brick tower was far grander in scale than its predecessors – taller, with a more powerful lamp. Within its first weeks of operation, the light station felt Lake Superior’s full fury. Storm waves washed away the dock, and a section of the bluff collapsed, nearly destroying the fog signal building. Keeper O.K. Hall recorded, “The gale last night made the tower shake.” The vibration was so strong that he feared the lighting apparatus would break. Two nights later, the temperature plunged, and he noted, “Our oil congealed so that it would not burn.”

As if physical hardships were not difficult enough, Hall found that his assistant, John Drouillard, posed an even greater challenge. The two quickly came to despise each other.

“I have lived in a perfect hell all winter,” Hall complained. “He abuses me with the most profane language a man can utter, from no cause or provocation, and threatened to give me a thrashing. I caught him asleep on his watch and since then, he has lived in one part of the house and I in the other.”

The stalemate was not resolved until Hall received permission to fire Drouillard.

If the early years of the Outer Island station demonstrate how bad life can be when lighthouse occupants don’t get along, the reminiscences of a later keeper show a brighter side to island life.

“It was like home out there,” recalled Vern Barningham, light tender in the 1940s. “It was cool and nice and quiet. All four families got along together. All the wives got along swell.”

Two more lighthouses followed Outer Island on the extremities of the archipelago: Sand Island at the western edge of the chain, and Devils Island, Wisconsin’s northernmost patch of ground. The small Sand Island light was built from stone quarried right on site; the Victorian Gothic structure is a perennial favorite among lighthouse fans. The austere iron cylinder at Devils Island, by contrast, has been likened to a missile ready for launch, but its setting overlooking the island’s sea caves can’t be beat for dramatic beauty.

The people of the lights …

We know a great deal about daily life at the Sand Island lighthouse through the writings of a keeper’s wife. In 1895, Ella Luick arrived on the island as a teen-aged bride. Keeper Emmanuel Luick was happy to let his young wife help with paperwork, and Ella used the station logbook as a personal diary. Its pages record her pleasure in picking strawberries and blackberries, her frustration with flies that sometimes became “terrible bad,” her anger at the hawk that ate her chickens. The logbook tells of one frightening day, when, alone at the lighthouse, she caught a finger in her sewing machine, piercing it through.

“It was not very painful,” she reported, “but I fainted twice from nervousness.”

Ella was neither delicate nor helpless. The log records many occasions when she ran the light while Emmanuel made overnight supply trips to the mainland. Late in the 1901 season, the keeper fell seriously ill. She took over his duties for nearly three weeks, tending the lamp each night and caring for the station by day, all while looking after her sick husband. As the shipping season came to an end, she wrote proudly in the log: “Mrs. Luick inspected the Station. Everything in order for the winter.”

Serving as de facto assistant keeper was not unusual for a lighthouse wife. One observer commented, “I know of no other branch of the government in which the wife plays such an important part.” While running homes and caring for children under arduous conditions, many lighthouse women took turns filling lamps, trimming wicks and watching the flame all night. Occasionally, the Lighthouse Service recognized the value of the wives’ labor and granted them the title of “assistant keeper,” with salary to match. Among women so designated were Mary Snow and Anna Larson at Raspberry Island and Matilda Rumrill at Michigan Island. More typically, wives received no pay for their work.

Resourceful as she was, Ella Luick could not overcome loneliness and boredom. One Independence Day she celebrated, “firing off some firecrackers and torpedoes and having as good a time as was possible,” then lamented that it was “a very poor imitation of a Fourth.”

At the end of the 1898 season, impatient for the boat to take her to their winter home, she wrote, “I haven’t anything whatever to do and time goes slowly.” Two days later, still waiting, she added, “Mr. Luick hasn’t anything to do, so he can help me do nothing.”

Ten years as a keeper’s wife was enough for Ella Luick. On May 19, 1905, a log entry in her husband’s hand says simply, “Mrs. Ella Luick left for Bayfield on Steamer Barker at 6 PM.” She never returned to the island, or to her husband, again.

Emmanuel Luick remarried several years later and had four children with his second wife. One was born at the lighthouse, with only the father to attend the delivery; another died on the island, taken ill during a storm that kept medical aid out of reach. The Luicks were not alone in either their joy or sorrow: several births were recorded at the lighthouses over the years and several deaths.

If lighthouse life could be tough on adults, children seemed to thrive in the island environment. Recollections of keepers’ sons and daughters often echo the words of Grant Kirkendall, whose father served at Michigan Island: “There always seemed to be things to do.... Playing pirate, frontier scout, swimming, hunting agates or just walking through the woods or along the beach. Although there might not be other children around, if you had an active imagination, you were never alone.”

Typically, wives and children left when school started on the mainland. The most trying times for keepers started soon after, as autumn storms gave way to winter. Sometimes a keeper would stay after navigation shut down, but usually Lighthouse Service tenders like Marigold and Amaranth picked them up just before ice closed in. In December 1918, the lake froze so quickly that no boat could get through to relieve the stations, and the Devils Island keepers walked 18 miles across the windswept ice to reach the mainland.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Lynn E. Marvin

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

La Pointe lighthouse is not at La Pointe on Madeline Island, but is on Long Island.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Lynn E. Marvin

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Chequamegon Point Lighthouse is on Long Island, too.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Courtesy National Park Service from Desmond Johnson

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

The original lighthouse on Long Island looks different from both of its descendants.

Harrowing storms, quiet heroes …

Although the light stations were built to lessen the chances that shipwrecks would occur, the hazards of navigation on Lake Superior resulted in numerous occasions when keepers would take an even more active role in aiding distressed mariners. At times, their actions were nothing short of heroic. In 1885, the steamer Prussia caught fire on the open lake off the tip of Sand Island. Lighthouse keeper Charles Lederle rowed a small boat several miles out to the burning vessel and single-handedly rescued the entire crew.

Perhaps the worst day in the history of the Apostle Islands began at Sand Island a few months after Ella Luick departed. Early on a stormy morning in September 1905, Emmanuel Luick heard a distress signal from a vessel close to shore. He climbed the tower in time to watch the steamer Sevona break in two as it struck a hidden shoal. Passengers and crew tried frantically to reach shore on lifeboats and improvised rafts. Seventeen survived, but Luick was helpless to aid seven who perished.

Meanwhile, a similar tragedy was unfolding elsewhere in the archipelago. A few hours after Sevona foundered, the schooner-barge Pretoria broke apart off Outer Island. Abandoning ship, the crew of 10 nearly reached shore but were tossed into the water when their lifeboat capsized. Sixty-one-year-old keeper John Irvine waded repeatedly into the surf to pull gasping men to safety; thanks to his efforts, five survived.

In recent years, advances in technology have made such disasters rare on the Great Lakes. Progress brought change to lighthouses, too, eliminating the resident keepers. In 1921, Sand Island was the first Apostles light converted to automatic operation, with an acetylene lamp controlled by a valve that responded to the sun’s warmth. Organizational shifts brought abolishment of the Lighthouse Service in 1939 and transfer of its functions to the U.S. Coast Guard. As civilian keepers retired, young Coast Guardsmen took their places, and the former homes of lighthouse families assumed the air of military posts.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Lynn E. Marvin

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Outer Island is a lonely outpost for a lighthouse keeper.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Courtesy National Park Service

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

The fog signal houses were photographed in 1893.

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Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Courtesy National Park Service / Susanne Ellis Collection

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands

Outer Island Keeper John Irvine and his oldest grandchild, Irvine Dion, posed for this portrait probably in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1905.

New keepers of the lights …

It took a long time, but one by one the keepers’ dwellings were shuttered across the archipelago. The last manned station, Devils Island, was automated in 1978. Left unoccupied in the harsh environment, the buildings inevitably suffered.

With establishment of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in 1970, lighthouse ownership passed to the National Park Service. Coast Guardsmen still visit the towers once or twice a year to service solar-powered lamps, but Park Service employees and volunteers maintain buildings and guide visitors around the sites.

Caring for historic lighthouses is a big job and taxes the park’s resources, but the agency has made steady progress preserving the sites. Few tasks exceed the Park Service’s project for 2002. Erosion of the cliff below Raspberry Island lighthouse presents a serious threat to the site. If nothing halts that erosion, the building could be lost to Lake Superior within as few as 10 years. Outer Island light faces a comparable, though less immediate, threat. Plans call for multi-faceted erosion control, combining construction of revetments at the base of the cliff and slope stabilization through the planting of carefully selected vegetation.

Apostle Islands light stations hold many stories from the years they’ve guided sailors on the waters of the world’s greatest lake. It’s encouraging to think that, with the proper care, the lighthouses will survive to tell their tales for a long time to come.

The Lights

Devils Island

  • Light station – Established a temporary wooden tower built 1891, permanent tower built 1898, automated 1978.
  • Material: Cast Iron.
  • Tower height: 82 feet.
  • Original lens: 3rd Order.

Long Island

  • Original La Pointe tower – Built 1858, converted to duplex dwelling 1897, abandoned circa 1938, currently in ruins.
  • Material: Wood.
  • Tower height: 34 feet.
  • Original lens: 4th Order.
  • New La Pointe tower – Built 1897, automated 1964.
  • Material: Cast Iron.
  • Tower height: 67 feet.
  • Original lens: 4th Order.

Chequamegon Point

  • Tower – Built 1897, automated 1964, retired and moved 1986.
  • Material: Cast Iron.
  • Tower height: 42 feet.
  • Original lens: 4th Order.

Sand Island

  • Light station – Built 1881, automated 1921.
  • Material: Stone.
  • Tower height: 44 feet.
  • Original lens: 5th Order.

Outer Island

  • Light station – Built 1874, automated 1961.
  • Material: Brick.
  • Tower height: 90 feet.
  • Original lens: 3rd Order.

Raspberry Island

  • Light station – Built 1862, entered service 1863, reconstructed and expanded 1906, automated 1947.
  • Material: Wood.
  • Tower height: 43 feet.
  • Original lens: 5th Order.

Michigan Island

  • Old tower – Built 1856, entered service 1857, abandoned 1858, relit 1869, retired 1929.
  • Material: Stone.
  • Tower height: 64 feet.
  • Original lens: 3.5th Order.
  • New tower – Built in Pennsylvania 1880, re-erected on Michigan Island 1929, automated 1939.
  • Material: Cast Iron.
  • Tower height: 112 feet.
  • Original lens: 3.5th Order.

(NOTE: Fresnel lenses – invented by Augustin Fresnel – were ranked in seven “orders” from the largest 1st Order to the smallest 6th Order with a 3.5 Order most used on the Great Lakes.)

Historian Bob Mackreth lives in northern Wisconsin and his broad interests cover all facets of the Great Lakes maritime industry.