WISCONSIN
Door County lighthouses
See the light in Wisconsin.
The door resembles a bulkhead, and I duck and ease myself out. The sudden force of the wind compels me to tuck my baseball cap into my jacket pocket. Over the rail, I look down at the little people in the yard looking up. Beyond them, the white-tipped waves march in, row by row, to shore, and I can see for miles up and down the coastline. The sun has broken through again, and the cumulus clouds seem to mimic the lake with their own relentless current. The crisp air, the scent of cedars, pines and lake water, and the bright white of tower, wave and cloud in the afternoon sun amount to a marvelously vivid sensory experience.
Standing at the top of Cana Island Lighthouse is like being at the helm of an amazing ship. Titanic be damned; this is a true king-of-the-world feeling as wind and water whirl around you.
Lighthouses, intended to help ships avoid disaster, have the unintended role of tourist attraction. And Door County came by its 10 for good reason. Its jagged shores once were and still can be a sailor's nightmare. The county name comes from Porte des Morts, or the Door of Death, for the passage between the mainland and
Most of the lighthouses can be seen only from the outside -- by car or by boat -- but three can be toured seasonally: Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, Pottawatomie Lighthouse and Cana Island Lighthouse.
Cana Island is home to the quintessential lighthouse: the 90-foot-tall tower painted a gleaming white, a red-roofed keeper's home attached at the base, and the surrounding restless waters alternatively lapping or pounding at the rocky shore just outside the stone wall of the yard.
The 8.7-acre island rests between Moonlight Bay and North Bay just north of Baileys Harbor.
Mike Chisolm gives tours at the lighthouse. "Welcome back to 1869," he says as he shows me the former keepers' living quarters. The pantry and kitchen are shown as they once were, while the living room and parlor have become the welcome center and gift shop. The exhibits chronicle the structure's history and the stories of the keepers. The keeper's office houses photos and audio exhibits while the second floor offers more photographs and a couple of short videos.
Chisolm uses a hands-on prism exhibit to demonstrate how a lighthouse works. Remarkably, the bulb itself is the size of a little
The light was once powered by kerosene, and the keepers used wood stoves for heat and cooking. "We've since been modernized," Chisolm says. The Cana Island light has been automated since 1944 and operated by the
Just south of Cana, closer to Baileys Harbor, are the Range Lights. When lined up from offshore, these two towers help navigators take bearings. Though there are no tours inside the structures, the setting is the Ridges Sanctuary, a boreal forest preserve with unusual land formations like ripples in the earth that show the evolution of the shoreline over thousands of years.
On the other side of the peninsula between Fish Creek and Ephraim is Peninsula State Park and the Eagle Bluff lighthouse, which guided traffic through the shipping channel between the mainland and some shoals not far offshore. Built in 1868, Eagle Bluff's 43-foot-tall light and its attached house were home to keepers and their families until the light was automated in 1926. Now travelers can join guided tours of the two-story house. A similarly designed tower on Chambers Island stands sentinel over a more westerly passage straight out from the viewpoint here, but it is reachable only by boat.
For the serious lighthouse enthusiast, there is Pottawatomie. Completed in 1837, the original lighthouse was the first on Lake Michigan. A second construction replaced it in 1858, but in 1988 it, too, was dismantled. Friends of Rock Island, however, wouldn't stand for it, and the rebuilt lighthouse there today is the fruit of their efforts. Volunteers take turns staying there as guides.
Just getting to the lighthouse will take you a full day, with two ferry crossings and a mile hike on the small car- and bike-free island. The visit also may require you to camp overnight at the state park. But to see this remarkably remote place, where one keeper actually lived alone for 15 years, is worth the effort.
 Should we take offense, order a drink, or what? That depends, of course, on where you think these words turned up. |
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