Marblehead
(Ohio) Lighthouse
Shipping on the Great Lakes had
been steadily increasing in volume since the discovery of the lakes by French
trappers between 1615 and 1669. After the Revolutionary War, the
fledgling United States needed revenue. One of the few taxes available to the
government was tariffs on trade goods. In order to foster trade, Congress, in
its ninth official law passed the Lighthouse Act to construct lighthouses. Ohio
became the 17th state in 1803, and Commodore Oliver Hazzard Perry defeated a
British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813, gaining possession of large
portions of the Great Lakes for the United States.
In 1819, the fifteenth U.S.
Congress recognized the need for lighthouse on the Great Lakes to guide
mariners by day or night. They authorized $5,000 that year and another $5,000
the following year, for the construction of a lighthouse to mark the entrance
to Sandusky Bay, the safest harbor between Cleveland and Toledo on Lake Erie.
The fifty-five-foot tower of the light was completed in November of 1821 by
Sandusky’s first stonemason, William Kelly, and six assistants, using
locally-quarried limestone. The tower was set on bedrock, with no man-made
underpinnings. It was located on three acres of what the locals called Rocky
Point, a small peninsula on the larger Danbury peninsula which was part of the
Firelands given to Danbury CT residents. The name Marble Head (two words) did
not come into use until around 1840, so the lighthouse was called the Sandusky
Bay Lighthouse until 1870 when it was renamed the Marblehead Lighthouse.
The top and inside of the
lighthouse were completed in 1822. A light source, comprised of 13 lanterns
with 16” polished brass reflectors fueled by whale oil, beamed a fixed white
light. Kelly also built a stone lighthouse keeper’s dwelling on the property
next to the lighthouse. Revolutionary War Veteran, Benajah Wolcott was
appointed the first Keeper by President James Monroe in June and the light was
finally lit. Wolcott also had his own private residence on his 114-acre farm about
3 miles from the light.
As whale oil became scarcer and
more expensive, a series of other fuels were employed by the Lighthouse
Service, including lard oil and eventually kerosene. By 1858 the light at
Marblehead had been changed to a single pressurized kerosene lamp with a 4th
order glass Fresnel lens to intensify the lamp's brightness out on the lake.
This lantern consumed much less fuel each night and further increased the
visibility of the lighthouse.
By the 1890’s the ships on the
Great Lakes were getting larger and required deeper water. This forced shipping
further from the shoreline and the lighthouse needed to shine brighter and
farther. To accomplish this, an addition to the height of the tower and a
larger lens for the light source were planned. The larger lens would require a
larger lantern (the windows the light shines through), a matching dome on top
and larger deck around the lantern. The problem was if the tower were made
taller, the conical shape of the tower would end up being too narrow to support
the changes. So, in 1897, over eight feet of stone was removed from the top of
the tower and a circular brick liner was built inside the tower from the base,
back up to its original height. This made the top of the tower larger in
circumference than it had been originally. In 1898, a spiral iron staircase was
attached to this liner, replacing the wooden steps. In 1900 nearly seven more feet of height was
added to the brick liner, keeping the larger circumference intact. In 1901, a
ten-ton, ten-sided lantern replaced the old eight-sided lantern. The lantern
was reused from the decommissioned Erie Land Light in Pennsylvania. A new
observation deck and a second, smaller walkway deck was added around the new
lantern to facilitate cleaning the windows. With the addition to height, the
new lantern, including dome with ventilator ball and lightning rod, raised the
height of the lighthouse to a little over 76 feet tall. In 1903, the new 3 ½
order Fresnel lens from Paris, France was installed along with a clockwork
mechanism to rotate the lens to make the light appear to flash every 10
seconds. This beautiful glass prismatic lens is now on display in the Keeper’s
House Museum adjacent to the lighthouse. In 1923, the kerosene-fueled lamps
were replaced by electric bulbs making the light go from 42,000 candlepower to
350,000. Today the light source is supplied by high-intensity green LED lights
that were installed in 2013. In 1958, the entire mechanism was automated so it
turns on at dusk and off at dawn. Thus, the need for on-site lightkeepers was
over.
From 1822 to 1943, fifteen
principal keepers and five assistant keepers tended the light. (Since one man
was an assistant before he became the principal keeper, there were really only
19 people instead of twenty.) Marblehead boasts the first female keeper on the
Great Lakes and has had two women maintain the light over the years. The current Keeper's House was built in 1880
to replace the crumbling original dwelling. In 1939, with war in Europe looking
likely, President Roosevelt's Reorganization Order #11 disbanded the U.S.
Lighthouse Service and gave operation of all aids to navigation, to include
lighthouses, to the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard is the “keeper of record”
of all U.S. lighthouses to this day.