Situated on the east side of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River from Lake Ontario, the original Tibbetts Point Lighthouse exhibited the light of ten lamps set in reflectors from its octagonal lantern room. In an 1838 report, Naval Lieutenant C.T. Platt found this “very useful light” to be in “bad order” and the associated keeper’s dwelling to be in a “bad condition.” The dwelling’s roof and the lantern atop the tower both leaked. The tower required a new coat of Roman cement, and the dwelling needed “a little painting.” All these repairs, according to Platt, could be made for an estimated one hundred and twenty-three dollars.

Aerial view of Tibbetts Point Lighthouse Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

In 1852 the Lighthouse Board, responding to a “numerously signed” petition from parties interested in commerce on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, requested $15,000 to replace the “notoriously inefficient light long neglected on Tibbett’s Point.” A new lighthouse, the present sixty-nine-foot circular tower, was completed on July 15, 1854, and its fourth-order Fresnel lens, illuminating 270° of the horizon, was first activated a few weeks later on August 1st.

At the age of forty-four, Adam Cratsenberg enlisted in the 25th regiment of the New York volunteers at the start of the Civil War. Although old enough to be the father of most of his comrades, Cratsenberg’s patriotism compelled him to take up arms for his country. Cratsenberg fought in the battles of Rappahannock Station, Antietam, Fredricksburg, the Wilderness, Spottsylvannia Court House, and Cold Harbor, and after being captured spent a couple months in Libby Prison. On June 2, 1864, during the Battle of Cold Harbor, Cratsenberg lost an arm. Following the Civil War, he received an appointment as keeper of the Tibbets Point Lighthouse, a position he held for about twenty years. A staunch Republican, Cratsenberg feared he would lose his position after the election of Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic President following the Civil War, and decided to resign before he could be replaced by a Democrat appointee.

A new two-story, frame dwelling was built for the station in 1880, and a decade later, the Lighthouse Board noted in its annual report that it was important that the station’s location “be made known at all times and in all kinds of weather.” Accordingly, $9,300 was requested for the establishment of a steam fog signal. This request was repeated for years until the amount was finally approved on March 2, 1895. Still, the brick fog signal house and duplicate 10-inch whistles were not ready until the opening of navigation in 1897. Later that same year, a stone wall, three feet thick, twelve feet high and sixty-five feet long, was built at the foot of the bank near the fog signal to protect the point from further erosion.

The fog signal’s characteristic was originally a three-second blast every ninety seconds, but this was changed to a three-second blast followed by alternate silence intervals of seventeen and thirty-seven seconds in 1900. To provide water for the steam-powered signal, a reservoir was excavated in the rocky bank near the signal house and connected to the lake by an inlet channel.

Along with their families, the two keepers, now needed to staff the station, were living in one small dwelling, “much to the discomfort of both.” A new dwelling for the assistant keeper was first requested in 1898. At that time, $3,800 was deemed sufficient for its construction, but by the time the funding was made available in 1906, the cost had risen to $4,000. The station’s second two-story keeper’s dwelling was built in 1907.

The Montonna family watched over the Tibbetts Point Lighthouse for half a century, starting with the appointment of David Montonna as keeper in 1885. David’s son William became keeper in 1897, the year before the end of his father’s term of service, and would serve until his retirement in 1937. In 1912, the Oswego Daily Times carried the following paragraph on Keeper Montonna’s service.

The Tibbett’s Point lighthouse above Cape Vincent, marking the entrance to the American channel of the St. Lawrence, flies a white pennant bordered with red and bearing a black lighthouse. This is neither a signal of distress nor a warning to the weary mariner, but it is an honor signaling the Tibbett’s point light and its keeper, W. E. Montonna, from among all of the 75 light houses between Detroit and Ogdensburg as the best kept and neatest light and grounds in the district. It is what is known in the service as an efficiency pennant.

The Coast Guard operated Tibbetts Point Lighthouse from 1939 until it was automated in 1981. The Coast Guard station in Oswego now services the light periodically. The keeper’s dwellings did not remain vacant long after automation, as they were opened as a youth hostile in 1984. The Town of Cape Vincent acquired the lighthouse in 1991, but the Tibbetts Point Lighthouse Society, formed by Shirley Hamblen in 1988, carries out the care and restoration of the tower. A visitors center, built by the town and staffed by the society, was added to the grounds in 1993. After renovations, the fog signal was opened to the public in 1998.

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References

1. Annual Report of the Light House Board, various years.

The Tibbets Point Lighthouse Hostel, housed in the keeper's dwellings, is open from May 15 to October 15 and can be reached at (315) 654-3450. The Tibbetts Point Lighthouse Society opens a visitors center daily in the summer and from Friday to Monday on the shoulder seasons. Hours of the center are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The lighthouse itself is not open to the public.