 |
 |
 |
| Click on thumbnails to view enlarged versions | ||
| Tawas Point Lighthouse | Seeing The Light |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Click on thumbnails to view enlarged versions | ||
|
Historical Information
By 1867, a mere fourteen years after the station's completion, the Eleventh District Inspector reported that the pointing between the rubble stones in the tower was falling out, and that the lantern had deteriorated to the point that water was leaking into the tower interior, damaging the wooden stairs and leaving the interior walls in constant state of dampness. He also reported that the kitchen floor in the dwelling needed replacement, and that a water supply for the keeper was necessary. However, beyond making minor "Band-Aid" repairs, the Lighthouse Board elected not to seek the funds necessary for properly repairing the structures, as it realized it had problems of significantly higher magnitude to solve on Ottawa Point.
Evidently the combination of the Lighthouse Board's recommendation, Editor Hoard's protestations, and added impetus from Michigan's State Representatives made the necessary impression, with Congress appropriating the sun of $30,000 for the erection of a new light station during its 1875 session. Eleventh District Engineer Major Godfrey Weitzel selected a site for the new station later that year, and drew up plans and specifications for the station's construction that winter. Title for the site was obtained in the summer of 1876, and with the delivery of a work crew and materials to Ottawa Point on August 12, work began at a feverish pace.
A decagonal cast iron lantern was erected at the center of the gallery, and covered with a tapered copper roof with ventilator ball, standing sixty-seven feet above grade level. A lightning rod atop the ventilator ball was attached to a copper cable, which lead down the outside of the brickwork to a ground stake driven alongside the foundation. A spiral cast iron staircase with three landings wound its way within the tower to a hatchway through the keepers could gain access to the lantern. The 1½ story brick dwelling was built over a stone-walled cellar, and attached to the tower by a covered passageway to provide the Keeper access to the tower without having to leave the warmth of the building during inclement weather. A cast iron door at the tower end of the passageway was installed to stem the spread of a possible fire between the two structures. Finally, the entire crib structure was covered-over with a plank deck to allow the Keepers easy footing when moving around the station.
In September 1875, an additional crib protection 130 feet in length and 10 feet in width was erected to a height of four feet above the lake level at the northwest corner of the existing crib around the station. This cribwork was filled with materials removed from the old 1853 tower and dwelling, which had been demolished after the new station was established.
The new Fourth Order lens was ordered from Paris, and after receipt at the Detroit depot during the summer of 1891, the District Lampist was again dispatched to Ottawa Point to undertake the installation. The new lens was officially exhibited for the first time on the night of September 1, 1891, with its new characteristic of a repeated 30 second cycle, consisting of fixed white light for 25 seconds followed by a 5 second eclipse, visible for a distance of 16 miles. 1896 again saw the rebuilding of the timber platform around the tower and dwelling, and the beginning of a second extension to the landing wharf at the rear of the station, which on its completion in 1897, lengthened the wharf by an additional 640 feet. When the new station was built in 1876, lard and sperm oil ware used for fueling the lamp. Relatively non-volatile, the oil was stored in a purpose-built room in the dwelling cellar. With a change to the significantly more volatile kerosene, a number of devastating dwelling fires were experienced, and beginning late in the 1880's the Lighthouse Board embarked upon a program of erecting separate oil storage buildings at all US light stations. To this end, a brick oil storage house was built in 1898, six of the timber cribs supporting the wharf were rebuilt, and the boathouse was rebuilt at the end of the extended wharf.
With the increased workload represented by the fog signal, the Detroit office determined that the station would need an Assistant Keeper. However, realizing that the diminutive dwelling was too small for a second keeper and his family, the Lighthouse Board requested an appropriation of $5,000 for the construction of a second dwelling in its annual reports for 1900. George Galbraeth was appointed as the station's first Assistant on March 16, 1900, and since no arrangements had been made for living accommodations, we can only surmise that he must have moved into one of the rooms in the main dwelling. Evidently, Galbraeth was not too enamored with the living arrangements, as he resigned from lighthouse service on January 31 of the following year, after less than a year's service. Edward L Sinclair took over for Galbraeth after transferring-in from Huron Island, where he had served as Second Assistant for three years.
Finally in 1922, an existing house in town was purchased as an Assistant's dwelling, moved to the station, and erected on a foundation to the north of the tower. Three years later, on October 27 1925, the 10-inch steam whistle and boilers were removed from the fog signal building and replaced by a Type F Diaphone signal, and the characteristic changed to a repeated 60-second cycle consisting of a blast of 4 seconds, 16 seconds of silence, a second blast of 4 seconds followed by 36-seconds of silence.
In a rededication ceremony on October 8, DNR Director K
L Cool flipped the switch which light up the tower exterior. The DNR has
plans to completely restore the interior of the tower and dwelling, and
we hope that within the next couple of years the entire structure will
again be open, and the public will again be able to climb the tower to
take in the magnificent view it affords. |
Construction at the Point began early
in 1852, and continued through the remainder of the summer and into the
fall. Since no photograph of this early tower have surfaced, it's exact
appearance is uncertain. However, we do know that the tower walls were
built of solid rubble stone masonry, and stood 45 feet in height from
grade level to the center of an array of Lewis lamps equipped with
silvered reflectors. By virtue of the tower's construction on elevated
ground, the Light sat at a focal plane of 54 feet above lake level and
approximately twenty feet from the diminutive 1½-story brick Keeper's
dwelling. Construction came to a close in October 1852, and with the
work completed so late in the year, the decision was made not to exhibit
the light until the following spring. Sherman Wheeler was appointed as
the station's first Keeper, and arriving at Ottawa Point late that
winter, exhibited the new Light for the first on the opening of the 1853
season of navigation. The tower and dwelling were the first permanent
structures to be built on Tawas Bay, with log cabins being the only
other structures in the area.
In the early 1850's a cry arose in the
maritime community, voicing concern over Pleasonton's tight-fisted
administration of the nation's aids to navigation. A clerical
administrator, Pleasonton had no maritime experience, and it showed-up
in the sub standard workmanship and poorly chosen locations of many of
the lighthouses erected under his administration. A study commissioned
by Congress recommended the establishment of a nine-member Board to
oversee the administration of aids to navigation. Staffed with Navy
officers and Engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Lighthouse
Board was established in 1852, relieving Pleasonton from any further
involvement. One of the Board's first orders of priority was the
upgrading of illumination systems from the dim and poorly performing
Lewis Lamps to the far more efficient and powerful Fresnel lenses
manufactured in Paris. To this end, the Lewis lamps were removed from
the Ottawa Point Light in 1856, and replaced with a rotating Fifth Order
Fresnel lens. This lens was designed to exhibit a characteristic fixed
white light with a red flash every ninety seconds. To impart the desired
characteristic, the lens was outfitted with a red bulls eye panel and
was situated atop a cast iron pedestal and equipped with a set of wheels
known as a chariot . A clockwork motor rotated the lens around the lamp
at an exact rotational speed which placed the bulls eyes between the
mariner and the lamp every minute and a half, thereby creating a bright
red flash which permeated the constant white light.
By virtue of the prevailing Northeast
wind, Ottawa Point had forever been in a state of evolution. Driven by
wave and wind, sand from the lake-bed and the shoreline was continually
deposited onto the end of the Point, changing its configuration. Over
the years since the construction of the Light, this natural reshaping
had continued unabated, lengthening the Point by almost a mile, and
leaving the old lighthouse "high and dry," three quarters of a
mile from the end of the point it was designed to mark. Additionally,
the light had a reputation among mariners as being extremely dim and
difficult to see from out in the Lake. The combination of the dimness of
the light and its distance from the Point represented a disaster waiting
to happen.
That disaster came when Captain
Olmstead ran his schooner "Dolphin" aground on the Point
beyond the lighthouse during a heavy Southeast gale. Olmstead openly
blamed the "faint flicker" of the lighthouse for the accident,
a cry that was picked up by H. E. Hoard, the editor of the Iosco County
Gazette a few weeks later. In one of his reports on the incident, Hoard
claimed that "this is not the first instance where our feeble
Lighthouse out in the country has proved a snare, instead of a guide." He continued; "Nature has favored us with one of the
best harbors on the lakes, and it would seem that the small amount
necessary to make it safe and easy access, might be appropriated by our
Government, especially when such immense sums are being expended in
other places to build up Harbors of Refuge, Life Saving Stations, etc.,
etc."
As time had proven, the shifting sands
of the entire point created an unsuitable location for a tall tower, and
in order to create a stable base on which the structure could be
erected, an area at the end of the Point was shored-up with a timber
crib. Within this cribwork, timber piles were driven to provide a secure
base on which a circular foundation of cut limestone foundation blocks
were laid. Atop this foundation, a team of masons erected the brick
tower. Standing sixteen feet in diameter at its base, the walls tapered
gracefully to a diameter of nine feet six inches at their uppermost.
Supported by twelve gracefully curved corbels, a copper-clad gallery was
installed and encircled by an iron safety railing.
Construction was completed as winter
cast its icy grip across Tawas bay, and with the weather too cold to
allow the painting of the tower exterior, and the end of the navigation
season close at hand, the decision was made to postpone exhibiting the
light until the arrival of spring. That winter, the Fifth Order Fresnel
was removed from the old tower, and carefully installed in the new
tower. By virtue of the tower's location atop the cribbed area, the lens
now sat at a focal plane of 70 feet. With the break-up of ice on the
lake. Keeper James Harald climbed to the lantern to exhibit the light in
the new station for the first time on an unrecorded date at the opening
of the 1877 season of navigation.
The deck on the crib was replaced in
1890, and with dropping lake levels exposing an ever increasing expanse
of beach around the Point, the landing wharf at the rear of the station
in Tawas Bay was extended 600 feet to reach the three foot water depth.
Also this year, as a result of recurring problems with keeping the
light's rotational speed timed accurately, the District Lampist was
dispatched to the station to inspect the lens rotating mechanisms. While
the Lampist made some adjustments to the chariot at the base of the
lens, the problem was evidently of a nature beyond that which could be
repaired in the field. With the Ottawa Point Light becoming increasingly
important as a guide to mariners coasting the western shore, the
decision was made to both upgrade the lens to one of the Fourth Order
and to modify the characteristic to increase the light's overall
effectiveness.
After the Board's annual pleas for
funding to construct a second dwelling went ignored for five years,
Eleventh District Inspector Commander Herbert Winslow insisted that
arrangements be made for a dwelling for the Assistant, and in 1905 an
abandoned boathouse on the Point was patched-up and converted into a
temporary dwelling for the Assistant Keeper. In a further attempt to
stem erosion, brush and stone revetments were built along the lakeshore
in the vicinity of the fog signal building, and 1,300 willow trees were
planted. The following year, a barn was built, 23 cribs were
reconstructed, and the walks connecting the station with the fog signal
were replaced with concrete slabs which were poured at the Detroit depot
and transported to the site.
Nature continued to have her way on the
sandy hook of Tawas Point, and the Point continued on its inexorable
growth into Tawas Bay. The elevated timber crib on which the station was
erected was replaced by concrete walls, and the entire area was
graded-over with soil and planted with grass. While the concrete walls
were only visible in a few places, the location of the crib remained
clearly evident as a rectangular raised area on the lawn. By the 1950's, the lighthouse once again stood
too far inland to serve as anything but a coast light. However, with the
introduction of radar and radio, mariners no longer relied as heavily on
the Light, and the tower now served more as a historical artifact than
as a structure of high navigational significance. Thus, the station was
automated and closed in 1953. Keeper Leon DeRosia, who had tended the
Light for the past six years, accepted a transfer to Grays Reef and
departed for his new assignment on Lake Michigan, making him the last
Keeper of the Ottawa Point Light.
The Coast Guard announced plans to
excess the station in 1996, and ownership of the buildings was
transferred to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in 2001.
Deciding that it wished to restore the station to its turn of the
twentieth century appearance, in May 2002, the DNR took the
controversial step of demolishing the 1922 Assistant's dwelling. Over
the remainder of the year, over 3 million dollars were spent at the
site, including such improvements as the burial of elevated power lines,
the installation of a new red-painted steel roof on the dwelling and the
installation of flood
lights to illuminate the
tower at night.
Inventory of Historic
Light Stations, National Parks Service, 1994