Light Hearted

Toledo Harbor Lighthouse was established in 1904 in the western end of Lake Erie, marking the entrance to the Toledo Shipping Channel and the approach to the Port of Toledo on the Maumee River. The buff-colored brick tower has a steel framework, and the total height of the lighthouse is 85 feet. There’s also an attached one-story fog signal building. The building’s distinctive Romanesque architecture has led some to liken it to a gingerbread house. Resident keepers staffed the lighthouse until its 1966 automation.

Today the lighthouse is in the care of the Toledo Harbor Lighthouse Preservation Society, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization with more than 500 members. Under the provisions of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, ownership of the lighthouse was conveyed to the Society in 2007. Sandy Bihn is the founder and president of the Toledo Harbor Lighthouse Preservation Society. She was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ohio Environmental Council in 2017.

On this date in 1789, the first Congress approved an act for the establishment of lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers. Two hundred years later, Congress passed an act that designated August 7, 1989, as National Lighthouse Day. This day is observed at many lighthouses, although Congress has not designated National Lighthouse Day in perpetuity.

For this special edition of the podcast, host Jeremy D’Entremont plays some clips from the interviews in past episodes. Topics include, “What do you love about your lighthouse work?” and “What makes lighthouses so special?

Eldred Rock is at the north end of Alaska’s Lynn Canal, 55 miles north of the port of Juneau and about 35 miles south of Skagway. Eldred Rock Lighthouse was first lighted on June 1, 1906, as one of four lighthouses in the Lynn Canal. It’s the only remaining example of the wood-frame lighthouses that were built in the state between 1902 and 1906.

The light station was automated and destaffed in 1973. The Eldred Rock Lighthouse Preservation Association was organized to restore, maintain, and preserve the light station. The organization entered into a lease agreement with the U.S. Coast Guard on April 1, 2020.

Sue York is the organization’s executive director. After graduating from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1995, Sue served as Operations Officer aboard the Coast Guard buoy tender Papaw, followed by a tour as Operations Officer at Vessel Traffic Service Houston/Galveston. She then enjoyed 14 years as an educator after moving to Juneau, Alaska, with her husband Matt and three daughters in 2003. Apart from three years in Valdez, Alaska, serving as Coast Guard Ombudsman, Sue has made Juneau her home.

In 2016, combining her love for outdoor athletics and her interest in southeast Alaska history, Sue became a pedicab tour guide, providing service to cruise ship visitors along the docks and streets of historic downtown Juneau.

With local maritime commerce in the area growing, the high cliffs of Cape Beale on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, were surveyed for a lighthouse in the early 1870s. A 31-foot-tall wooden tower was constructed with a powerful second-order lens in the lantern, and the station began service in 1874. The original wooden lighthouse at Cape Beale was replaced by a modern 32-foot skeletal tower in 1958.

Today, Cape Beale is one of 27 lightstations that remain staffed on the coast of British Columbia. A resident keeper maintains the navigation equipment and buildings, monitors weather and sea conditions, and watches for emergency situations.

For more than a dozen years, the keeper has been Karen Zacharuk. (Photos courtesy of Karen Zacharuk.)

Many thanks to the Canadian Coast Guard and Fisheries and Oceans Canada for granting permission for this interview.

More than 20 miles from the nearest port at Mount Desert Island in Maine, low-lying, wave-swept Mount Desert Rock is only about 17 feet above sea level at its highest point. Congress appropriated $5,000 for a lighthouse on Mount Desert Rock on March 2, 1829, to aid mariners heading to Frenchman and Blue Hill Bays from the south. The light went into operation on August 25, 1830. The structure weathered many storms before being replaced by a new 58-foot granite tower in 1847. The new tower was designed by the noted architect Alexander Parris.

The station was automated in late 1977. The light station was then leased to Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic for use as a whale watching station. Under the Maine Lights Program, Mount Desert Rock Light Station, along with Great Duck Island Light Station, became the property of the College of the Atlantic in 1998. Allied Whale is the marine mammal research division of College of the Atlantic.

Sean Todd is the Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and he also directs Allied Whale, the college’s marine mammal research program. He spent ten years in Newfoundland as part of the Whale Disentanglement team, a group that releases large entangled whales from fishing gear.

In Maine he is trained as part of a first response team that performs a similar function. Sean also acts as a professional guide, including 14 seasons in the Antarctic and 11 seasons in the Canadian sub-Arctic and Arctic.

He created, wrote, and stars in the award-winningLife in the World’s Oceans, a 30-part DVD series available from TheGreatCourses.com.

This is the first of two episodes focusing on light stations that are owned by the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Great Duck Island is more than 200 acres in size and about nine miles south of the much larger Mount Desert Island. The Lighthouse Board recommended a light station on the island in 1885, and funds were appropriated in 1889. The light was established on December 31, 1890, with a 42-foot-tall cylindrical brick tower, three keepers’ dwellings, a fog signal building, and other outbuildings.

The light was automated in 1986 and the fourth-order Fresnel lens was replaced by a modern optic. The light remains an active aid to navigation, while most of the rest of the island was purchased by the Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy in 1984.

In 1998 Great Duck Island Light Station, along with Mount Desert Rock Light Station, became the property of Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic under the Maine Lights Program. College of the Atlantic owns approximately 12 acres on Great Duck Island, consisting of the one remaining keeper’s house, two boathouses, and the lighthouse. Students and staff from the college now live in the former keeper’s dwelling much of the year. The College of the Atlantic’s ongoing research projects on the island include the monitoring of the large nesting gull population, as well as detailed study of black guillemots and the nocturnal Leach’s storm petrel.

John Anderson has been a professor at College of the Atlantic for more than 30 years. He teaches zoology, ecology, and animal behavior, and he’s a W.H. Drury Professor of Ecology and Natural History. He’s a New Zealander by nationality, British by upbringing, and has spent time in the UK, Europe, and the western U.S. His field research centers around Great Duck Island. He says that he’s interested in the intersection between natural history and human history in relation to long-term ecological processes.

Pomham Rocks is a tiny island in the Providence River, about 800 feet from the east shore of the Riverside section of East Providence, Rhode Island. With increased shipping traffic heading toward Providence in the 1800s, Pomham Rocks was an obvious place to establish a navigational aid, and funds were appropriated in 1870. A wooden dwelling with a mansard roof was built on a granite foundation with a hexagonal lighthouse tower on the front center of the building. It was first lighted on December 1, 1871.

The lighthouse was discontinued in 1974 and was replaced by an automatic light on a skeleton tower. In 1980 the General Services Administration sold the property to the Mobil Oil Company, now Exxon Mobil, which has a large refinery and terminal near the lighthouse. Exxon Mobil eventually leased the historic structure at no cost to the American Lighthouse Foundation. A new chapter of the Foundation, the Friends of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse, was announced.

A restoration of the exterior of the building was completed in early 2006, and the navigational light was returned to the lighthouse. Then, in the spring of 2010, Exxon Mobil donated the lighthouse to the American Lighthouse Foundation. Recent work has included the construction of new docking facilities, restoration of the oil house, installation of new fencing, restoration of the lighthouse windows, and restoration of the interior.

Dennis Tardiff arrived at Pomham Rocks in April 1971 as a 19-year-old Coast Guard fireman. He left Pomham at the age of 22 as a third class Petty Officer. As one of the last Coast Guard keepers at the station, Dennis lowered the flag on June 5, 1974, when the light was decommissioned. More than four decades after he left Pomham Rocks, Dennis became reacquainted with the lighthouse when he became involved with the restoration project in 2016. Dennis is now the chairperson of the Friends of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse. He was recognized for his efforts with a 2018 volunteerism award from the American Lighthouse Foundation. In this interview, Dennis talks about his days as a Coast Guard light keeper and about the preservation of this jewel among New England lighthouses.

This is part two of a two-part interview with Ralph Krugler, historian for the Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society. Ralph is not only one of the most knowledgeable people about Florida lighthouses, but he also has been helping with the ongoing creation of the J. Candace Clifford Lighthouse Research Catalog for the U.S. Lighthouse Society.

Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse is on the southeast coast of Florida. The property is now cared for by the Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society, and public tours access the light station by boat.  You can learn more about the organization and tours at hillsborolighthouse.org. In this part of the interview, Ralph talks about the very colorful history of the light station and its keepers, about the book he’s written about it and his research sources, and about the work he’s done on the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s research catalog.

Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse is about halfway between Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton on the southeast coast of Florida, marking the northern limit of the Florida Reef, the third largest coral barrier reef system in the world. The skeletal lighthouse was constructed in 1907, with a second-order Fresnel lens.

The Fresnel lens was taken out of operation in 1992 and a modern optic was mounted on the gallery railing. Local citizens mounted a restoration campaign, and the Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society was formed in 1997. The Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society opened a museum and information center in 2012.

Ralph Krugler is the historian for the Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society. He has spent several years researching the history of the light station, its keepers, and related subjects, and he’s put together an extensive book on the subject. He’s also on the board of directors of both the Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society and the Florida Keys Reef Lights Foundation. This is part one of a two-part interview; part two will posted on Wednesday, July 1.

Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society

The lighthouse on Maine’s Seguin Island was approved by President George Washington in May 1793. The tower had to be rebuilt in 1819, and then again in 1857. Also in 1857, a new nine-foot-tall first-order Fresnel lens was installed, and that lens remains in operation today.

Over a period of 31 years, the station was foggy 15 percent of the time. A 10-inch steam fog whistle was installed by 1873, replacing a fog bell. In 1907, the island set an all-time Maine mark for fogginess—2,374 hours, or about 31 percent of the year.

After automation in 1985, the future of the station was uncertain. Concerned local citizens founded the Friends of Seguin Island Light Station in 1986. Since 1990, caretakers have lived at Seguin in the summer. In recent years, public access to the island has mainly been via the Seguin Island ferry from Fort Popham. There are hiking trails on the island, and there’s a museum and gift shop in the keeper’s house.

Cyndy Carney has been with Friends of Seguin Island Light Station for over 20 years. She has served in many capacities and now serves in the role of Executive Director.

Friends of Seguin Island Light Station

Some additional history