Wisconsin

What do you say after 19 years? How do you reminisce about a life-time? How can you get all those thoughts down on paper? When we started, our friends thought we were crazy. The place was a mess. Lake Michigan had been high, and the causeway had been under water for a number of years - 1977 was the first year it was drivable in some time.

Great Lakes Light Stations were seasonal and operated from the time ice broke up enough yin the spring to allow ships to move until shipping ceased in the fall. A season could be as long as March to December or as short as mid-May to early November. Most of the Great Lakes light stations were small single or two family stations. However, the addition of a fog signal at a station would require more than two keepers. Because the stations were seasonal, Great Lakes Keepers were paid less than their counterparts on the coasts.

"I fell to the floor screaming. I screamed at the top of my voice, until I was exhausted. And still my husband did not come. There was another long, terrible night before me." Mrs. Robert Carlson, 40 years ago bride of a lighthouse keeper in the Apostle Islands group, told how she fought to keep her reason when her husband and his brother were lost for four days on the ice at the head of Lake Superior, during a winter she spent with him on Michigan Island.

Many Lighthouse Service employees lacked the mechanical competency to operate the new fog signal machinery. The Naval Secretary wrote to the Eleventh District Inspector in December 1905, "The Board invites your attention to the fact that trouble is apt to come when steam or hot air fog-signal plants are put into old light-stations, as the keepers of such stations are likely to have little if any, knowledge of fog-signal machinery.

The year is 1863. Abraham Lincoln defeated Stephen Douglas and became the sixteenth President of the United States. The Civil War was raging. The Confederates were victorious over the Yankees at Chancellorsville. The tide turned later that year with two northtern victories at Gettysburg and Chattanooga. In the midst of this national crisis, the United States government constructed a lighthouse in Lake Superior, on Raspberry Island.

Despite the lighthouses that mark them, treacherous rocks and reefs take their toll on ships that stray off the beaten path when gales whip Lake Superior to a frenzy. Men in these lonely lighthouses have thrilling stories to tell. Hans Christensen, head keeper on Devil's Island, stood by my side at the rail of the lighthouse tender Marigold. The tender was making its first trip of the season, distributing men and supplies to the most isolated posts on Lake Superior.

Our Pages from the Past article in Volume 10, #2 (Winter 1994) related the 1874 opening of the Outer Island Light Station in the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior by Keeper O.K. Hall and the Assistant he had appointed, John Drouillard. Keeper Hall's log entries, through December of that year, tell of the trials and tribulations of opening a new station, but don't mention any problems with his assistant. However, something must have occurred over the winter to sour the relationship, as evidenced by the following letters which were sent in the spring of 1875.

Sept. 17, 1874 - I got ready to move my household goods from Bayfield to Outer Island on a sailboat, but three gentlemen that were going to put up the fog whistle arrived at Bayfield and employed a tug to bring them out, so we improved the opportunity and came with them. When we got there we found Mr. Crump, the Lampist, had arrived that morning, so I was just in time to learn and improve all I could in running it. From Friday until Tuesday night Mr. Crump worked diligently and completed it in a workman like manner, with pleasure to himself and honor to the craft, if I am any judge.

My parents, Otto and Anna Olson, were married in Kenosha, WI on March 1906. After the wedding they traveled tp Bayfield, WI where he was assigned Assistant Keeper of the Outer Island Light Station. Mother had her first lighthouse experience on Outer Island from May through October, 1906. Their first child, Jeabette was born in Bayfield next year, I was born 1909 also in Bayfieldand my brother, Alvin, was born in 1911 at Ashland, WI.