Inhabited by the Erie Indians as early as 1656, Vermilion had grown large enough by the mid-nineteenth century for its harbor to warrant government maintenance. In 1847, Congress appropriated $3,000 to build a beacon light and prepare the head of the pier on which it would be built. Before 1847, the people of Vermilion had constructed their own navigational aid: wooden stakes topped with oil-burning beacons at the entrance of the harbor.

Vermilion Lighthouse with 1906 oil house Photograph courtesy Michel Forand

By 1852, the pier was in need of repair, a project that cost $3,000. An inspection report filled out in 1858 describes the light at Vermilion as "a gallows frame standing on a completely wrecked pier." In 1859, the beacon light and pier were rebuilt at a cost of $5,000. The new lighthouse was made of wood and topped with a whale oil lamp. With the help of a sixth-order Fresnel lens, a lamp’s flame produced a sheet of light that was visible from several miles out in Lake Erie. A man from the town looked after the lighthouse, lighting the lamp each evening and refueling it each morning.

In 1870, the Lighthouse Board requested $4,000 to purchase a lot and build a keeper's dwelling at Vermilion. Since a vacant lot easily accessible from the piers and from which the beacon light could be seen was not available, a lot was purchased with a house already on it. The house was altered to accommodate the storage of oil, and a stone sidewalk and cellar were added.

The Lighthouse Board noted in 1877 that as the old wooden tower was decayed and in danger of falling down a new iron tower had been ordered. To cast the lighthouse, ironworkers used sand molds of three tapering rings, with an octagonal cross-section. The iron they used was from unpurchased Columbia smoothbore cannons, obsolete after the Battle of Fort Sumter. As noted by Vermilion native Ernest Wakefield, “The iron, therefore, of the 1877 Vermilion lighthouse echoed and resonated with the terrible trauma of the War Between the States.”

Once the ironworkers in Buffalo had completed the casting of the lighthouse and ensured that all parts fit together correctly, the pieces of the lighthouse were loaded onto barges in the nearby Erie Canal. Hauled by mules, the barges reached Oswego, New York, in two weeks. From there, the lighthouse was transferred to the lighthouse tender Haze. The Haze, a steam-powered propeller vessel, departed Oswego on September 1, 1877 and headed west for the Welland Canal, where a series of twenty-seven locks raised the boat to the water level of Port Colborne and onto Lake Erie. One must wonder why this circuitous route was taken when Buffalo, where the tower was cast, sits right on Lake Erie.

On its way to Vermilion, the Haze stopped at Cleveland Harbor, where it took on the lighthouse’s lantern, lumber and lime for building the foundation, and a crew to raise the lighthouse. Also loaded was a fifth-order Fresnel lens, which had been shipped to Cleveland by train. All that is known about the lens is that it was made by Barbier and Fenestre of Paris, France. Whether it was ordered specifically for the Vermilion lighthouse or recovered from the Erie Harbor Lighthouse, no one knows.

One day later, the Haze arrived in Vermilion. It took several days to prepare the foundation, and once it was in place, the crew used the derrick on the Haze to lift the bottom ring of cast iron and place it on the foundation. After the ring was bolted down, the successive tapering rings were put in place and bolted to each other. Then the pediment and lantern were added. The Fresnel lens and oil lantern were installed later. A spiral, iron stairway led from the first floor to the second floor of the tower, from where an iron ship's ladder led to the lantern room.

Once assembled, the tower measured thirty-four feet high and stood at the end of the pier with a 400-foot-long catwalk connecting it to shore. This allowed the lighthouse keeper to travel between the light and the mainland when large waves crested over the pier. One such lightkeeper was Captain J. H. Burns, who lived in the dwelling purchased by the government in 1871. From this home on the corner of Liberty and Grand Street, he would walk to the pier each night to light the lantern inside Vermilion’s lens.

The characteristic of the light was changed at the opening of navigation in 1880 from fixed white to fixed red. On April 27, 1893, the lighthouse was struck by the schooner M. S. Bacon, which was being towed from the harbor by the steam tug J. P. Devney. Two angle-iron plates in the tower were so damaged that they had to be replaced. A repair bill of $161.61 was sent to the owners of the Devney, and when they refused to pay, the matter was turned over to the justice department.

Initially, oil for the lantern was stored in the keeper’s house. It was not until 1906 that an oil shed, accommodating 540 gallons, was built just south of the lighthouse. The lamp was converted to acetylene in 1919, changing the light's characteristic to a white flash every three seconds. The light was eventually put under the care of the keepers of Lorain Lighthouse, and in the early 1920s, the Vermilion keeper’s home was sold to the local Masonic Lodge.

According to a 1920 newspaper article, residents of Vermilion felt there was "no more romantic spot on earth than the Vermilioin lighthouse not even Niagara Falls excepted." The article continued, "If all the residents of Vermilion were questioned and truthfully answered to the query, 'Where did he pop the question?' a large percentage of them would answer, 'Down at the lighthouse'"

In early 1929, Theodore and Ernest Wakefield, teenagers at the time, noticed that the Vermilion Lighthouse was leaning toward the river. Most likely, the lighthouse pier had suffered damage in an icy storm. The Wakefield boys reported what they had seen to their father, Commodore Frederick William Wakefield, who contacted the U.S. Lighthouse Service in Cleveland. The U. S. Corps of Engineers came to Vermilion and determined that the light was indeed unstable. Within a week, the lighthouse had been dismantled - it was removed in March - and a eighteen-foot skeletal steel tower was erected to mark the pier. The skeletal tower was moved to a new foundation near the outer end of the west pier on October 5, 1929.

Commodore Wakefield offered to purchase the old lighthouse and move it to his property, Harbor View, but his request was denied. Instead, the cast-iron pieces were loaded up and hauled away. The residents of Vermilion were sad to see their beloved lighthouse go. No one told them what the fate of the old lighthouse would be, and its whereabouts were unknown until many years later.

In 1934, a pair of range lights were established on the pier using the skeletal tower as the front light and a steel pole, 880 feet from the front light, to display the rear light. The range lights were electric and their characteristic was fixed red.

Ted Wakefield, one of the young men who had noticed the lighthouse leaning in 1929, had very fond memories of Vermilion’s past and its lighthouse. As an adult, he put his efforts into encouraging downtown Vermilion to maintain its historical 19th century appearance. His childhood home, Harbor View, was donated to Bowling Green State University and later sold to the Great Lakes Historical Society. Built of gravel from Lake Erie in 1909, the old house became the main structure of the society's Inland Seas Maritime Museum. This gave Ted an idea. He decided that a replica of the 1877 lighthouse would be the perfect complement to it.

Ted spearheaded a fund-raising campaign to build the new lighthouse. Funds were raised by mailing out brochures, writing articles in the local paper, and collecting donations at the museum. By 1991, Ted and his fellow fund-raisers had collected $55,000---enough to build a sixteen-foot replica of Vermilion’s 1877 lighthouse. Architect Robert Lee Tracht of Huron prepared the plans, which were approved by the city, county, and state authorities, but only after a long delay. Even the U.S. Coast Guard approved the plans for making the light a working lighthouse, right down to its steady red light. A company in Buffalo was again used to fabricate the lighthouse.

Mayor Alex Angney broke ground for the new lighthouse on July 24, 1991. The 25,000-pound base of the replica lighthouse, measuring fifteen feet in diameter, was brought to Vermilion on a flatbed truck, and cranes were used to place it onto the foundation. According to rumors, before the base was attached to the foundation, an 1877 gold piece was placed under the vertex of the octahedron that pointed true north. It seems only fitting that a piece of 1877 be part of the new lighthouse’s foundation.

The tower was raised in less than three hours on October 23, 1991. The lantern room was attached the next day, and a fifth-order Fresnel lens, owned by the museum, was mounted inside. The tower was wired for electricity, and an incandescent 200-watt lamp with an Edison-base was installed. A red glass cylinder surrounded the lamp to complete the replica. The new Vermilion Lighthouse was dedicated on June 6, 1992, and still operates as a private navigational aid today.

For years, Vermilionites did not know the fate of the 1877 lighthouse. Most thought it had ended up on the scrap heap, but the real answer was revealed to Vermilion when Olin M. Stevens, of Columbus, Ohio, visited the Inland Seas Maritime Museum. Stevens came seeking additional information on his grandfather, Olin W. Stevens, who was a third generation lighthouse keeper, and when he learned the museum was trying to determine the fate of the 1877 tower, he realized he had just recently found the answer. While searching for information on his ancestors to give to his grandchildren, Stevens opened an old trunk and discovered a newspaper article that told about the service of his grandfather at Tibbetts Point Lighthouse. A portion of the article read, “Altho this is his first duty on Lake Ontario, Charity Shoal light, visible from the Tibbett's Point headland, is an old friend. The tower upholding the gas lamp on Charity formerly was under Keeper Stevens’ charge at Vermilion, near Lorain. Victim of an ice shove, it was salvaged and taken to Buffalo, where it was assigned to Charity.” The mystery had been solved. (Olin W. Stevens was responsible for the automated Vermilion Lighthouse while he was serving as keeper at Lorain from 1920 to 1937. His next assignment was to Tibbetts Point.)

Once the lighthouse had been dismantled in 1929, it was transported to Buffalo, New York, where it was renovated. Six years later, in 1935, the lighthouse was given a new home and a new charge — on Lake Ontario. Sitting on a cement crib off Cape Vincent at the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River, the Vermilion Lighthouse was given a fifth-order Fresnel lens and renamed East Charity Shoal Lighthouse.

Due to a lack of exhibit space and declining attendance, the Great Lakes Historical Society decided to close the Inland Seas Maritime Museum in September 2011 and open the larger National Great Lakes Maritime Museum in Toledo in 2013. Realizing the replica lighthouse belonged in Vermilion, the society deeded it to the city even if the city is unable to come up with the needed $1.65 million to purchase the museum building and its 2.3-acre parcel.

Head Keepers: William Andrews (1849 - 1851), James Anderson (1851 - 1852), Charles Judson (1852 - 1854), O. Allen (1854 - 1861), William Andrews (1861 - 1869), Burt Parsons (1869 - 1873), Charles Miles (1873 - 1879), Harris Miles (1879 - 1901), George Codding (1901 - 1904), John Burns (1904 - 1914), John Wetzler (1914 - 1920).

References

1. Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board, various years.
2. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Lighthouses, various years.
3. Annual Report of the Lake Carriers' Association, various years.
4. The Lighthouse That Wanted to Stay Lit, Ernest Henry Wakefield, Honors Press Inc., 1992.
5. Inland Seas Maritime Museum.
6. "Maritime museum bequeaths mini lighthouse to Vermilion," Steve Fogarty, ChronicleOnline, July 21, 2012.