Mark Kuehn

Join Jeremy D'Entremont and co-host Cindy Johnson for an interview with Mark Kuehn of the North Point Lighthouse Museum in Wisconsin.

North Point Lighthouse is in Lake Park on the East Side of Milwaukee. The lighthouse and the Queen Anne-style keeper’s house have been restored to their early twentieth century charm through the determined efforts of a group of volunteers, the North Point Lighthouse Friends, Inc., formed in 2002.  Since completion of restoration in the fall of 2007, the historic site is open to the public for tours. The original keepers’ quarters now serves as a museum.

North Point Light Station, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. USLHS photo by Tom Tag.

Mark Kuehn is the curator of the North Point Lighthouse Museum. He’s been on the board of directors for seven years and he’s been the curator for six years. Mark is also creative director for an advertising and marketing firm called Anthologie in Milwaukee, and he serves on the board of directors for All Hands Boatworks, an organization that teaches young people wooden boat building skills. He is also an artist who works in watercolor, graphite, and collage, and he is a graduate of the Portland School of Art and Design in Portland, Maine. Mark is a maritime history buff and has worked as a lobster fisherman in Maine. He gives lectures about the maritime history of Milwaukee and the North Point Lighthouse. You can catch his talks on the tall ship Denis Sullivan dressed in a Lighthouse Service keeper’s uniform.

Saddleback Ledge Lighthouse, photo by Jeremy D'Entremont

Also featured in this episode of Light Hearted is the incredibly harrowing story of the first keeper of Maine's Saddleback Ledge Lighthouse, Watson Y. Hopkins. Hopkins and his family (seven children!) lived in three rooms inside the granite tower on a remote, wave-swept ledge for a decade.

The episode closes with the poem "A Lightkeeper's Dream" by Forest Wilcox of Gannet Rock Lighthouse in New Brunswick, Canada.

Listen to the podcast here: