Lighthouse
Design and Construction
The earliest lighthouses were simply bonfires built on hilltops to guide ships. The light from a bonfire could not have been very bright or traveled vary far. No doubt it was better than no light at all, but things were to improve, once greater safety became a concern
Some early lighthouses were wooden but most were made of stone or brick with a round or actagonal lantern enclosure on top. The first were illuminated by oil burning lamps which were limited in the amount of light they could produce.
The first real breakthrough came with the Argand lamp. In 1812 Winslow Lewis furthered improved the Argand lamp by combining it with a parabolic reflector, giving more light and direction.
The first American lighthouses on the Great Lakes were built between 1818 and 1822.
- Fort Niagara at the mouth of the Niagara River on Lake Ontario 1818
- Preque Isle at Erie Pennsylvia on Lake Erie 1819
- Galloo Island Light 1820
- Lights at Oswego on Lake Ontario 1822
- Rochester Harbour 1822
With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the Welland Canal in 1829 the Great Lakes region enjoyed tremendous growth in population and commerce. Consequently the number of lighthouse on all the lakes in both the United States and Canada grew along with it.
More American lighthouses were added between 1825 and 1830.
- Big Sodus Bay Light on Lake Ontario 1825
- Fairport 1825; Buffalo 1828; Cleveland 1829; Otter Creek and Barcelona 1829 all on Lake Erie.
The first lighthouse on Lake Huron were erected on the American shoreline. The first, the Fort Gratiot Light, at the entrance to the St. Clair River went into service in 1825. And also on Lake Huron Bois Blanc Island Light in 1829.
By 1840, there were four American lighthouses on Lake Huron. The first Canadian lighthouse went into service in 1847 at Goderich.
The first American lighthouse on Lake Michigan were Chicago Harbor Light and St. Joseph River both built in 1832.
The first lighthouses on Lake Superior were built as follows: At Whitefish Point, in the season of 1847; Copper Harbor, in 1848; Eagle Harbor, in 1850; Ontonagon, in 1852, and Marquette, in 1853.
By 1852 there were 76 operating American lighthouses.
- 27 on Lake Michigan
- 21 on Lake Erie
- 9 on Lake Ontario
- 8 on Lake Huron
- 6 on Lake Superior
- 5 on Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River
During
the nineteenth century the design of Great Lakes lights slowly evolved.
Until 1870 the most common design was to build a keeper's dwelling and
place the light either on the dwelling's roof or on a relatively small
square tower attached to the dwelling. In the 1870's, in order to raise
lights to a higher focal plane, conical brick towers, usually between
eighty to one hundred feet in height, began to be constructed. In the
1890s steel framed towers began to replace the older generation of brick
structures.
Between
1870 and 1910 engineers also began to face challenges created by building
lights on isolated islands, reefs, and shoals that posed significant
hazards to passing ships. These remote lights, usually built on underwater
cribs, often replaced lightships, which was the only practical way originally
available to warn sailors away from dangerous underwater rock formations.
Ships, however, proved difficult to maintain. They could not be put
in place until after the start of navigation season and often had to
be removed before the season's end. Worse, regardless of the type of
anchors used lightships could be blown off their expected location in
severe storms, making them a potential liability in the worst weather
when captains would depend on the charted location of these lights to
measure their own ship's distance from dangerous rocks.
Ten lightships were
still operational, 129 fog signals were maintained, as were about 1,000
buoys. Of these 1,771 navigational aids, in 1925 only about 160 stations
had resident keepers. Even at this early date, the vast majority of
navigational aids had been automated. By 1925 virtually all of the Great
Lakes lighthouses that today exist had been constructed.
In
1925 ten lightships were stationed on the lakes, however twenty years
later only one ship, the Huron, was still in service. The Huron would
remained stationed off Corsica Shoals in Lake Huron until 1970, when
this last active lightship on the lakes was decommissioned. Automation
also slowly changed the face of navigationalaids.

Lightship Huron docked at the Port Huron Museum For more information ckick here
The
keeper's residence, the tower, and all the other buildings and structures
that were constructed at a light station existed to make visible and
maintain one piece of equipment, the light itself.
In
the first half of the nineteenth century, generally used a lighting
system designed by Captain Winslow Lewis. The Lewis apparatus used a
lightly silvered parabolic shaped reflector to amplify the light created
by an Argand lamp that burned whale oil. In the field, the reflector
in the Lewis apparatus warped very quickly and the lightly silvered
surface was quickly abraded away by the tripoli powder, an abrasive
of the day commonly used to clean brass, that was used to clean it.
The result was that lights quickly grew dim and were of minimal help
to sailors.
A
far superior apparatus was introduced by French physicist Augustin Fresnel
in 1822. The Fresnel lens used a series of glass prisms that surrounded
the light source in a lenticular (double convex) configuration. Looking
a bit like a beehive the result was a bright, single beam of light that
was far superior to anything else available in its day. Fresnel lens
were classified into six "orders" based on the focal length
of the lens, however seven sizes of light actually existed because a
"third and a half" order lens was made. The largest, a first
order lens, had a focal length of 36 inches, a lens diameter of six
feet, and stood nearly twelve feet tall. In contrast a sixth order lens
had a focal length of only 5.9 inches, a diameter of under one foot
and was about two feet in height. Fresnel
The
French and English quickly adopted this new lens for their lights and
demonstrated the Fresnel lens superiority. Pleasanton, however, who
had become close friends with Lewis and relied on him for technical
advice, stubbornly refused to install the Fresnel lens in American lighthouses
despite its obvious superiority. In 1851 Pleasanton oversaw over 300
lights nationwide of which only three had Fresnel lens, each installed
because of direct congressional action.
 |
In
1852, the Fresnel lens became the preferred lighting apparatus
in American lighthouses. By the late nineteenth century the Fresnel
lens was in service throughout the Great Lakes. No first order
lens was ever installed on the lakes, leaving the five second
order lens placed on the lakes the brightest to be lit. By the
1920's Fresnel lens began to slowly give way to other forms of
lighting apparatus, however as late as 1986 about one hundred
Fresnel lens were still in use on the lakes. |
A
variety of different lights replaced the Fresnel lens. Lenses similar
to those used on train engines were often used as range lights.
Self-contained
lens-lantern lights, that relied on electricity for power, also were
developed, and over time became the new standard light for light houses
and other illuminated navigational aids.
About
the time that the Fresnel lens first began to appear on the Great Lakes
new lamps were also being placed in service to replace the Argand lamp.
Several lamps were used but all shared similar designs, using from one
to four concentric wicks, depending upon the amount of light desired.
Because of the near extinction of the sperm whale, new fuels were also
required. In the late 1850s the lights were fueled with colza (rapeseed)
oil. This decision, however quickly proved impractical as the oil was
manufactured from a rarely grown plant.
In
the 1860s preheated lard oil had become the most common fuel used in
lighthouses. Preheating, however, was difficult and required keepers
to somehow keep the oil warm as it was brought from a stove to the light.
The development of the incandescent oil vapor lamp allowed the board
in 1877 to adopt kerosene as the primary fuel for lights, and by 1889
incandescent oil vapor lamps fueled by kerosene were used in almost
all the lights on the Great Lakes.
As
early as 1886 experiments were conducted using electricity. It would
not be until the twentieth century, however, when the electric power
distribution grid became widespread and reliable portable electric generators
were readily available, that electricity would become the common way
to illuminate lighthouses. In 1925 sixty-eight major and forty-five
minor Great Lakes lights, or about one-quarter of the total in service,
used electrical power. By the early 1940s virtually all the lights on
the lakes were powered by electricity.
The
use of electricity also greatly facilitated the automation of the lights.
As early as 1916 a device was introduced that could automatically replace
a burned-out incandescent light bulb. Coupled with electrically run
timers that turned the lights on and off, it became increasingly possible
to run lighthouses with only an occasional visit for servicing and maintenance.
Automation eventually replaced keepers. Today all the lights on the
lakes are maintained through occasional visits by Coast Guard maintenance
crews.
Canadian Lights on the Great Lakes up to 1867. .
Lights in the Lake Ontario |
Lights |
Date of Establishement |
Kingston |
1844* |
Snake Island |
1858* |
Nine Mile or Gage Point |
1833 |
Outer Drake or False Ducks |
1828 |
Point Pleasant or Indian Point |
1866 |
Salt Point |
1851* |
Point Peter |
1833 |
Scotch Bonnet or Egg Island |
1856 |
Presqu'ile |
1840 |
Cobourg |
1844* |
Peter Rock or Gull Island |
1840 |
Newcastle |
1847* |
Oshawa, outer end, East Pier |
1844 |
Whitby |
1844 |
Frenchmans Bay or Pickering |
1863* |
Gibraltar Point |
1808 |
Toronto Harbour, West Entrance |
1838 |
Port Credit |
1863* |
Oakville |
1863 |
Burlington Bay, South Tower, Railway Bridge |
1838 |
Burlington Bay, South Pier |
1845 |
Port Dalhousie |
1852 |
Lights in the Lake Erie |
Lights |
Date of Establishement |
Port Colborne |
1852* |
Mohawk Island |
1848 |
Port Maitland |
1846 |
Port Dover, West Pier |
1846* |
Long Point or North Foreland |
1843 |
Port Burwell or Big Otter Creek |
1840* |
Port Stanley |
1844 |
Point Pelee Reef |
1861* |
Pelee Island |
1833* |
Lights in the Detroit River |
Lights |
Date of Establishement |
Bois Blanc |
1837* |
Lights in the Lake St. Clair |
Lights |
Date of Establishement |
Thames River |
1837 |
Lights in the Lake Huron |
Lights |
Date of Establishement |
Goderich main light |
1847 |
Point Clark |
1859 |
Chantry Island |
1859 |
Cove Island |
1859* |
Griffith Island |
1859 |
Nottawasaga Island |
1859 |
Collingwood |
1858* |
Christian Island |
1859 |
Killarney East Or Red Rock Point |
1866 |
Killarney West or Partridge Island |
1866 |
Little Current |
1866* |
Clapperton Island |
1866 |
Spider Island |
1866 |
Lights in the Lake Superior |
Lights |
Date of Establishement |
St. Ignace |
1866* |
Lights marked * are no longer in existence although, in some cases, new ones may have been built nearby since 1867.
Segments of this page has been reproduced from Fisheries and Oceans Canada information.