The most obvious part of the keeper’s duties was to keep the light operating according to the daily schedule, which would vary from station to station, depending on geographic location, typical weather conditions, and other factors. Although a keeper was responsible for making repairs and well as other routine duties, each one also had to be prepared to respond to emergencies, including shipwrecks. Typically, the keeper’s day began before dawn and ended well past dusk. Coast Guard took over responsibility in 1939.Ī keeper’s job was not quite a 24-hour job, but it could be. The care of the nation’s lighthouses moved from agency to agency until 1910, when Congress created the Bureau of Lighthouses. ![]() Lighthouse keepers became civil service employees in 1896. Keepers at first worked under the authority of a local Collector of Customs, though the Collector’s role declined over time as the business of maintaining lighthouses became more professionalized. The Service was the first Public Works Act of the first United States Congress it authorized the transfer of existing lighthouses from the jurisdiction of individual states to the federal government. Public interest in Split Rock continued to grow.Most lighthouse keepers as we think of them were employees of the United States Lighthouse Service, founded in 1789. ![]() In 1935 a new access road to the station was built, and in 1942 a gift shop opened. To handle the growing demand, visiting hours were established and a safety fence was erected along the cliff's edge. The Lighthouse Service required the keepers to escort any visitor to the lighthouse. This gave Split Rock Lighthouse five times as many visitors as any other station in the service. By 1938, Keeper Franklin Covell estimated nearly 100,000 visitors to the site. By the early 1930s about 5,000 people visited the lighthouse each year. The keepers and their families weren’t the only ones to take advantage of the new roadway. By the 1930s, the keepers and their families lived at the station year-round, the children boarding buses for school in Beaver Bay and Two Harbors and supplies arriving more steadily by road. The Lake Superior International Highway was built near the lighthouse in 1924, finally making the lighthouse accessible by land. An extended spur of the rail system allowed the keepers to push the carload of supplies right to the oil house and storage barns where the supplies were stored until used. The elevated railway, completed in 1916, hauled supplies on a flat car up the hill from the dock where the tenders were moored. In 1915, the Lighthouse Service began construction on a tramway at the southern end of the station. They needed a new method that didn't require calm weather, a rarity on stormy Lake Superior. ![]() However, delays due to wind and waves made it hard for the tenders to use the hoist and derrick system without causing further delay to their schedules. Lighthouse Service had a long history of supplying remote stations.Īt Split Rock, they adapted the steam-powered hoist and derrick used for raising construction supplies and instead used it to hoist freight from the tenders, or supply boats. Although the station was one of the most isolated on the Great Lakes when it was commissioned in 1910, the U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |