Original LaPointe Lighthouse Photograph courtesy Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

In 1851, Congressman Orasmus Cole presented a memorial to the U.S. House of Representatives praying for a lighthouse for La Pointe. Congress appropriated $5,000 for the project on March 3, 1853, and the following month, the Lighthouse Board secured title to 152 acres on Long Island from Joseph LeBel. Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves, a Lighthouse District Engineer, had recommended that the light be placed on Long Island as it would guide vessels approaching La Pointe from Lake Superior using the South Channel. Long Island hasn’t been an island since the mid-1970s, when it became part of a peninsula stretching nearly eight miles into Lake Superior.

Sweet, Ransom, and Smith of Milwaukee were selected as the contractors for the lighthouse, and when their workers arrived in the area, they were directed to Michigan Island by Abraham Smolk, a local representative of the Lighthouse Board. The men dutifully erected a stone dwelling with attached tower only to have the work rejected by Captain Sitgreaves because it had been built on the wrong site. The contractors protested Sitgreaves’ rejection but were eventually forced to build a lighthouse on Long Island as well.

Rather than construct a second stone lighthouse, the contractors hastily erected a frame, one-and-a-half-story dwelling with a six-foot-square tower rising from one end of its pitched roof. A fourth-order Fresnel lens, installed in the tower’s nine-sided lantern, went into service in 1858, sending forth a white light at a focal plane of forty-two feet. Michigan Island Lighthouse was discontinued with the establishment of LaPointe Lighthouse.

A stone pier foundation was placed beneath LaPointe Lighthouse in 1864 as the wind had removed much of the sand from around the structure, jeopardizing its integrity. In 1869, stone brought in from Raspberry Island was crushed and placed around the lighthouse to prevent the shifting of the sand.

The influential Cleveland Vessel Owners’ Association petitioned the Lighthouse Board for a fog signal at LaPointe in 1887. The Board requested a $5,500 appropriation from Congress for a steam fog signal the following year, and the amount was granted on March 2, 1889. The machinery and boilers for the fog signal were constructed under contract and then shipped from Detroit to LaPointe, where work on the fog signal commenced in October 1890 and was completed three months later. Located three-fourths of a mile east of the lighthouse, the signal commenced operation with the opening of shipping in 1891 and was active anywhere from 150 to 695 hours per season, while consuming between 8 and 35 tons of coal.

LaPointe Lighthouse converted into a duplex Photograph courtesy Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

When Ashland Harbor became an important port for ore in the late 1880s, a light was needed on Chequamegon Point, the western tip of Long Island, to guide vessels into Chequamegon Bay. After being petitioned by the Lighthouse Board each year since 1890, Congress appropriated $10,000 on March 2, 1895 for establishing a light and fog bell on Chequamegon Point and for replacing LaPointe Lighthouse with a new tower near the steam fog signal. A construction foreman and work party arrived at the station on July 15, 1896, and worked throughout the summer at erecting two iron towers for the new lights. With funds expended, work stopped for the season on October 30, 1896 and did not resume until August 1897, after $1,500 had been appropriated for completing the project.

The new LaPointe Lighthouse, cast by Chamblin S. Scott of Richmond, Virginia at a cost of $3, 912, consisted of a pyramidal, skeletal tower built around a cylindrical stairwell. Topped by a circular watchroom and an octagonal lantern room, the tower stood just over sixty-five feet tall and commenced displaying a fixed white light from a Henry LePaute, fourth-order, Fresnel lens on October 11, 1897, the same day Chequamegon Point Light was established.

As the keepers at LaPointe were now responsible for two lights and a fog signal, the original lighthouse was raised, a brick first story was added, and the rooms were arranged to create two separate dwellings that would allow a second assistant keeper to be assigned to the station. The wooden tower and lantern were removed from the dwelling as part of the renovations.

Joseph Sexton was appointed head keeper at LaPointe in 1889 and served at the station until his retirement in 1921. He witnessed the completion of the fog signal and the addition of the two new lighthouses and occasionally commented about these changes and other happenings in the station’s logbook. For example, on August 31, 1897, Keeper Sexton noted that he helped hoist two cast iron deck plates, which weigh 1,100 pounds apiece, to the top of the LaPointe Lighthouse.

Second LaPointe Lighthouse with fog signal Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

Here is a sampling of some of his other entries:

July 21, 1897: “Chopped the timber down across the point to get the wind to drive the flies away for they are very bad.”

August 5, 1894: “Returned with my wife. Married Sunday the 5th, 8 A.M.” This was Sophia, Keeper Sexton’s second wife, a niece of Mary, his deceased first wife. Mary bore five children, and Sophia would have six while at the station.

July 24, 1899: “This is my birthday. Just struck the even 50 today. Feel young and good. Hand steady and firm. Put a floor in the barn today. Flies very bad. Steamers in 4 out 3.”

May 27, 1909: “Lightning struck the tower at the fog signal & put out the light 9:10 P.M. & tore up the slab walk some for about 300 feet and run around the signal.” A lightning rod was placed atop the tower the following November, and its cable was buried eight feet deep in the sand.

On April 18, 1925, a powerful air diaphone, the first to be used in the Apostle Islands, replaced the station’s steam whistle, and on October 20, 1927 a radiobeacon was erected as an additional aid for mariners. The fog signal and radiobeacon were synchronized in 1931. LaPointe Lighthouse was electrified on August 3, 1937, and over the following two years a triplex was built near the tower and fog signal building using Public Works Administration funds.

Benjamin Hudak was appointed second assistant keeper at LaPointe Lighthouse in June 1930 and was promoted to first assistant just five months later. After eighteen years at the station, Hudak became head keeper in 1948 and served in that role until the station was automated in 1964.

The skeletal tower, triplex, and an oil house remain standing on Long Island today, along with ruins of the 1858 lighthouse and the foundation of the fog signal building.

Head Keepers: John Haloran (1857 – 1859), John Angus (1859 – 1861), David Cooper (1861 – 1865), Uriah Dawson (1865 – 1867), John Stewart (1867 – 1870), David Cooper (1870 – 1871), John Angus (1871 – 1875), Seth Snow (1876 – 1880), Alexander Davidson (1881 – 1888), Joseph Sexton (1889 – 1921), Knut Olsen (1921 – 1941), James Bard (1941 – 1948), Benjamin Hudak (1948 – 1964).

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. Light Stations of Michigan Island, Outer Island, Devils Island, Long Island, and Sand Island, Volume V, National Park Service, March 2011.
5. “The Retread Ranger Blog,” Bob Mackreth.