The year was 1916

7/18/2018

We  toured the Ontonagon Light house today. While it was built in 1866, it’s set up and furnished like it was in 1916. They did this because of additions and some remodeling that would have needed to be demolished.

Like most light houses of it’s time it was built to be ran by a bachelor, however in 1916 the lighthouse was ran by a man with a family of 8 children, the reason for a couple of additions that the man had to get approval for first then at his own expense paid for the most remodeling. Since the light houses only operated about 7 months a year, the government only supplied coal for the summer months. Since they lived year round in the lighthouse, he had to buy his own coal for heat during the winter months.

It was a pretty interesting and informative tour, much better than we expected for the $5 each admission price and Mary and I were the only ones on the tour.

The tour started at the museum with the best explanation of how a Fresnel Lens works that I have seen. Even better than a couple of TV shows on Lighthouse’s that I have watched.

Then we jumped in a van for the ride to the lighthouse itself. When it was built they didn’t order enough bricks and so the upper bricks are slightly different color than the lower ones.

The lighthouse also sits about 600 ft further inland then it did when originally built, the added shoreline coming from the dredging  operation to keep the mouth of the Ontonagon River deep enough for the ships to come into port.

It was the lighthouse operator’s duty to log the ships entering and leaving port and to keep track of arriving and departing passengers.

http://www.exploringthenorth.com/ontonagon/lighthouse.html