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| Sand Hills Lighthouse | Seeing The Light |
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Historical
Information At the Fifth Auditor's recommendation, Congress appropriated the sum of $4,000 for the construction of the Eagle River Light Station in 1850, with the station illuminated four years later. Together, the Cliff Mine and Eagle River continued to flourish, with the construction of huge stamping mills, warehouses, and streets lined solidly with boarding houses, saloons and miner's homes to serve the burgeoning population. With every boom, there is an inevitable bust. Declining copper prices slowed the Cliff Mine's output, and by the late 1860's Eagle River had become a virtual ghost town. With the mine's closure in 1873, Eagle River's once busy docks sat rotting, and without maritime traffic, the river mouth became silted to a point that the harbor became inaccessible to all but the shallowest draft vessels. By 1890, virtually the only vessel making its way into the harbor was the lighthouse tender on its annual supply trips, and the Lighthouse Board was well aware of the futility of continuing to maintain a light to protect a non-existent harbor.
Congress responded with an act authorizing the construction of the new station on February 15, 1893, but failed to make an appropriation for the necessary funds. While the Board reiterated the need for the appropriation in each of its' annual reports for the following seven years, no moneys were forthcoming. Citing rising costs, in its 1899 annual report, the Board increased its estimate of the necessary funds to $25,000, an amount which subsequently grew to $38,000 in its 1902 report, and yet Congress still failed to authorize the necessary funds. The Board continued to request the $38,000 in every subsequent annual report through 1907, when it finally abandoned the project, and ceased to mention the planned station. The Eagle River Light Station was decommissioned in 1908, and with no light between Ontonagon to Eagle Harbor, mariners making their way along the coast were forced to run blind at night.
Once again, the pleas for this station echoed unheeded through the halls of Congress, and Putnam repeated his request in each of his subsequent annual reports until Congress finally responded favorably with an appropriation of $70,000 for the project on June 12, 1917.
Work resumed the following spring, with the establishment of a temporary lens-lantern light and electrically-operated fog signal. The work crew then turned its attention to the simultaneous construction of both the fog signal building and the lighthouse proper, which lasted through the end of that year and into 1919. The fog-signal building was erected on a solid concrete slab, with its walls constructed of hollow tile with an exterior stucco coating. In order to ensure that the fog signal would always be operational, a redundant system of dual type "F" diaphone fog signals with duplicate compressors and oil engines was installed. Such a dual installation ensured that one unit was always operational when maintenance was being performed on the other. Each diaphone fed its signal through a cast iron "trumpet" resonator protruding through the wall of the building, which concentrated the sound and projected it seven miles across the lake. Work on the fog-signal was completed in May 1919, and was officially put into service on May 15.
The tower was crowned with a cast iron deck and a prefabricated circular cast-iron lantern of 7' 1" inside diameter furnished with curved glass and diagonal astragals. The Fourth Order Fresnel lens, manufactured by Henry-Lepaute of Paris was mounted on a ball-bearing race and rotated by a standard clockwork mechanism. Equipped with a 35 millimeter incandescent oil vapor lamp, the lens was designed to rotate at a rate which would show a fixed light with a characteristic flash every ten seconds, and by virtue of its 91 foot focal plane, was designed to be visible for a distance of 18 miles in clear weather.
Work on the lighthouse was completed in June of 1919, and Head Keeper William Richard Bennetts exhibited the light for the first time on June 18 of that same year. Sand Hills remained manned for only twenty years. In 1939, the Coast Guard assumed responsibility for the nation's aids to navigation, and automated the light with the installation of an acetylene lamp with automatic sun valve, thus eliminating the costs associated with the station's three keepers. With the closure of the station William Bennetts retired from service, after having served as the station's sole head keeper throughout all of its manned operation.
In 1954, with improvements in weather forecasting and the adoption of radar, it was determined that the light was no longer necessary. The stationed was decommissioned and the Sand Hills name was forever removed from the official listings of aids to navigation.
Detroit photographer and artist Bill Frabotta purchased the station,
converting the fog signal building into a summer cottage where he and
his wife Eva spent the following 30 years walking the halls of the
station building planning their upcoming restoration. After a
comprehensive three year renovation undertaken between 1992 and 1995,
the building was reopened as one of the nation's premier bed and
breakfast inns. Click
here to visit
Bill Frabotta's Sand Hills Bed & Breakfast Inn web
site. |
In its 1892 annual report, the Lighthouse Board noted that traffic
patterns on the lake had changed, and that eastbound vessels were making
a turn off Sand Hills, some twelve miles to the west of Eagle River, and
approximately midway between the coast lights of 
With the elimination of the Lighthouse Board in 1910, responsibility for
the nation's lighthouses was transferred to George R. Putnam who was
appointed to the newly formed position of "Commissioner of
Lighthouses" under the Treasury Department. In his 1911 annual
report to Congress, Putnam again picked up the call for the elimination
of the Eagle River light, and the erection of a new light station at
Sand Hills. Reporting that ten vessels had stranded on Sawtooth Reef
over the past decade with resulting losses in excess of a million
dollars, Putnam's revised proposal for the Sand Hills light station
called for an appropriation of $75,000 for the construction of both a
coast light and fog signal station.
Putnam acted quickly, with a forty-seven acre site selected, surveyed,
and purchased that summer. By the close of navigation for 1917,
contracts had been issued for virtually all of the materials required
for construction, the site had been cleared, and the concrete foundation
for the structure was poured.
The plans for the Sand Hills lighthouse were some of the most ambitious
ever proposed for a light station, and called for a combined yellow
brick light tower and triple dwelling, with the 70-foot tall tower
centered in the building. The tower itself was built around a steel
girder support system with concrete floors and a cast iron stairway, and
was designed as a self-contained fireproof central core to reduce the
chance of a fire in the tower spreading into the dwellings. The second
floor of the tower served as a central office, and each of the three
adjoining apartments had its own entrance into the tower.
Each apartment was outfitted with hardwood floors, with all interior
walls built of stud construction, and finished-out with hardwood trim
and doors. Each apartment sat on its own cellar, and surrounding central
basement which housed the equipment for the station's hot water central
heating and pneumatic water supply systems. The brick exterior of the
building was finished with cut stone balustrades and cornices, and the
roofs of each of the dwellings was sheathed with durable copper
sheeting.
A concrete dock was constructed at the waters edge for the unloading of
supplies, and a tramway constructed from the dock to the station
buildings to facilitate the movement of supplies.
The station stood empty until 1942 when it was temporarily reopened as a
wartime Coast Guard training facility, in which guise it served as home
and school to over 200 trainees at a time. The buildings were closed and
locked the following year, and the station was once again went empty.
The lighthouse was turned over to the General Services Administration
for liquidation. Offered at public auction in 1958, the entire station
property was purchased for the princely sum of $26,00 by H. Donald
Bliss, and insurance agent from the Detroit area. Bliss and his family
used the structure as their private summer cottage for the next few
years. While it was reported that Bliss had plans to restore the
structure, they never came to fruition as the property was once again
offered for sale in 1961.
Annual reports of the Lighthouse Board, 1890 through 1910.