The Lighthouse Depots of Lake Michigan: Part 2

In August 2009, I was privileged to attend one of the USLHS's 25th Anniversary dinners that were held around the country, this one in Saint Joseph, Michigan. We toured the old Saint Joseph Supply and Buoy Depot and had several long discussions about the depots and the fact that there was very little information about how they worked, who manned them, and their general history. After the dinner, I resolved to learn what could about the history of these depots. I began to collect data and started with a long interview with James Woodward, who worked for the Coast Guard and was trained by a Lighthouse Service lampist. Thanks to Jim's information and information from many other sources I was able to write this story. In The Keeper's Log, Volume 27, Issue 1, I covered the early years of the depots and those in Detroit, St. Joseph, and the Ninth District office in Chicago.