Apostle Islands Lighthouses
N and E of Bayfield on Michigan, raspberry, Outer, Sand and Devils Islands, Bayfield, WIIn 1886, Ashland's first ore dock was completed. Though Ashland was never to rival Duluth-Superior as a port, its proximity to Michigan mines and its rail connections made it a convenient shipping point. Thus the earlier lighthouses, which had originally been aids to local navigation, took on an important new role as ships began calling regularly at Ashland. By 1906, Ashland recorded over 2,000 arrivals and departures in one year: more than eight vessels a day during the shipping season. The importance of the lights on the outer islands is indicated by an informal count taken from the Devil's Island tower. At that time, 120 vessels were in plain sight. Considering the amount of competition for the Great Lakes shipping dollar, it would not be uncommon for captains to try to cut time by running as close to the south shore and the islands as possible, counting on the lights to give them fair warning.
Unlike most mainland stations, long periods of complete isolation were key facts of life for the lighthouse keeper and his assistants. A tender of the U.S. Lighthouse Service (later, the U.S. Coast Guard) put the personnel on the islands at the beginning of navigation in the spring and took them off as ice formed in the fall. That final voyage often proved to be the hardest experience of the season. Many
ed into Duluth completely sheathed in Ice. Other times, the going was so difficult that the captain chose to put the keepers off on the ice near Oak Island, necessitating a long and cold walk into Bayfield. One year, the tender arrived at one of the islands to find the keeper's larder down to one can of soup. Perhaps the most gruesome, yet telling example of isolation occurred in the 1930s when the keeper of the Outer Island Light died toward the close of the navigation season. "Not until the tender came to remove the keepers and close the light did anyone on the outside know. For twelve days, the assistant keeper, unable to contact a passing vessel, had stuck it out alone. "4 However, in the 1940s, the conditions that led to that occurrence were eliminated by the automation of all the lights. A keeper was maintained at La Pointe light until 1964. The Coast Guard still keeps three-to-four men on Devil's Island to oversee and maintain that station.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.