Grassy Island Range Lights | Seeing The Light |
|
Historical
Information The areas bounty and commercial potential was evident as early as July 7, 1838, when at the urging of local maritime interests, Congress appropriated $4,000 for the establishment of a lighthouse on Grassy Island, to warn mariners of the island during while seeking river entry. In 1838, Lieutenant James T Homans, to whom responsibility for the lighthouses of the Northern Great Lakes fell at the time, sailed up the lakes to locate appropriate sites for a number of new lighthouses for which appropriations had been authorized the previous year. Arriving at Grassy Island, Homans was dismayed with what he found, reporting the island to be "unsuitable for construction of buildings upon it of any durability, and totally uninhabitable by a keeper, being nearly under water, from the great rise of the lake, since the recommendation for a light upon it was made." Searching for an alternate location for the Light, Homans recommended that the light instead be established on Tail Point, a peninsula lying a short distance north of Grassy Island, with both higher and ground and blessed by the local mariners with whom he spoke during his visit. Fox River business interests were not easily dissuaded, and continued to apply pressure for the establishment of a lighthouse on Grassy Island. After the Legislature of the Territory of Wisconsin passed a resolution in favor of establishing a light on Grassy Island, the Governor of the Wisconsin Territory even convinced Vice President Mifflin Douglas and Speaker John Wesley Davis to go before the Senate and House respectively on February 1, 1846 to plead their case. While the matter was referred to the Commerce Committee, and a bill subsequently passed approving the establishment of the station on July 2, 1846, no appropriation was made. Thus the Lighthouse Board moved ahead with construction of the Tail Point light station, and it appeared that the matter of a light on Grassy Island was dead.
As work progressed, the Lighthouse Board recommended the establishment of a lighthouse to guide vessels to the new cut through Grassy Island, and Congress responded with an appropriation of $11,000 for the new station on April 7, 1866. However, with the harbor improvements still far from completion, the decision was made to postpone the establishment of the new light until the completion of the harbor improvements. With work close to completion in 1871, Eleventh District Engineer Brevet Brigadier General O. M. Poe approved plans and specifications for the erection of a pair of range lights on the island, and materials for their construction were ordered that winter.
Keeper Wing passed away on October 24, 1895 after 23 years of faithfully keeping the Grassy Island Range. To replace Wing, Ole Hansen accepted a transfer from Ahnapee, where he had been serving as keeper of the past two years. The year after Hansen arrived, a work crew arrived at the island, and demolished and rebuilt both the kitchen addition and the boathouse, which were showing signs of damage as a result of frequent standing water around the station.
After seven years at Grassy Island, Ole Hansen arranged a "station swap" with Louis Hutzler, the keeper at Tail Point, and on December 31 the two keepers traded positions. We have come across a number of examples of such "station swaps" in our research, and thus it would appear that the Lighthouse Board showed a willingness to accommodate the needs of keepers when such solutions were mutually beneficial to all parties.
As a result of positive experiences with acetylene lighting systems throughout the Great Lakes, acetylene lights with automatic sun valves were installed in both ranges in 1834. With this change, the characteristic of both lights were also changed, with the Upper light changed to fixed green with a visibility range of 10 miles, and the Lower light to a single green flash every 5 seconds. With the sun valve automatically turning the lights on at dusk and off at sunrise, the full time attention of a keeper was no longer necessary, and at 66 years of age, Louis Hutzler retired from lighthouse service, thus serving as the last keeper of the Grassy Island Range.
In 1999, the two towers were relocated onto piers at either side of
the yacht club entrance, and Baenen and his team began the task of
restoring the lights. Restoration work continued throughout the
following six years, with the completely restored lights dedicated at a
public ceremony on November 5, 2005. |