Both Lights Provide Navigational Aid

While visiting numerous lighthouses throughout the U.S. and Canada, I saw many different styles of lighthouses. Some were brick and mortar, some wood, some stone, and a few were metal. I think most everyone would agree that not all lighthouses are beautiful. Evidence of this is in some of the photos I’ve taken and previously posted to this blog. Regardless, lighthouses were built to aid mariners in ship navigation and not necessarily to add beauty to the local landscape. The following lighthouses represent two different styles, different materials, and depending on the observer, may see them as beautiful. Feel free to click on the pictures for an enlarged view.

The Sanibel Island Lighthouse in FL is an example of a pyramidal skeletal tower. Made of metal these type of towers could be built for roughly half the cost of a stone or brick tower of the same height. If needed, it was possible to disassemble and move the tower. Construction of the Sanibel Lighthouse cost $50,000 and was completed in 1884. Its 98-feet tower consists of four iron legs arranged in a pyramidal style around a cylindrical central column and topped by the lantern room. Originally, the lantern room was fitted with a third-order Fresnel lens. The center column on this lighthouse stops about twenty feet from the ground, therefore access must be by an external staircase.

 The Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse, FL was built in 1887 at a cost of approximately $200,000. This is an example of a brick and mortar tower. The lantern room was originally fitted with a first-order Fresnel lens. Its brick foundation extends to a depth of twelve-feet below ground to support the 175-feet double wall tower. Over one million bricks were used to construct this lighthouse. It is the second tallest brick lighthouse in the U.S. and its circular metal stairway consists of 194 steps. At the time of my visit here in 2001, a portion of the tower was surrounded by scaffolding to enable maintenance. (The tallest brick lighthouse is Cape Hatteras, NC.)

The Name Can Make a Difference

Have you ever had hindsight about a big decision in your life? Most people have probably experienced such an event, but few will admit it when they later discover a different decision would have yielded a better outcome.

A big decision for most Authors is choosing a book title. Whether published independently or through the traditional publishing method, normally the author has a say in the book title. In my case, I named my book and my publisher gladly approved it without suggesting any alternatives. The Wickie is a story about two lighthouses in OR, the keepers and their challenges with weather, family, friends, and death. I chose the name Wickie as it was a nickname the keepers called each other in the early days. 

Although I think the title is great, not long ago, I was made aware that my book could not be found on the Internet when searching for lighthouse books. In hindsight, after seeking additional knowledge of the Internet, I realize a better title for my book would have been The Lighthouse Wickies’. This can be corrected if I republish the book. However, in the mean time, “The Wickie” can be found on Amazon or Barnes and Noble by entering The Wickie in either web sites search field for books. For your convenience, links to their web sites are provided under "Tabs" in the heading of this blog. Whether you order via the Internet or from myself, I hope you will join other folks who said they really enjoyed reading “The Wicki.”

The Awakening

The Old Presque Isle Lighthouse at Lake Huron, MI was built in 1840. Although the tower is only thirty-eight feet high, its wall is twelve feet in diameter at the bottom with a thickness of three feet two inches. The wall tapers in until a diameter of six feet at the lantern room where the wall is one foot four inches thick. A unique feature is its stone stairway. This lighthouse was restored in 1959 and converted into a museum.

I saw this lighthouse in 1998 which was in the early days of my visiting lighthouses. Although I had seen and photographed a few lighthouses before this one, I had not gone inside and had paid little attention to their design, engineering, or the materials and skills involved in building a lighthouse. Those elements evidently didn’t stir my interest as they were not part of my job or training before retiring from the Army.

In my book, The Wickie, I wrote in the author’s note: “My initial thought was if you had seen one lighthouse, you probably had seen them all.” However, when I saw the steps of the Old Presque Isle Lighthouse, I suddenly realized how wrong I had been. Those stone steps, cut approximately three feet long, eight inches thick and eight to ten inches wide, had skillfully been cut and laid along the wall forming a circular stairway to the top. This fascinated me. Since that awakening, I’ve learned many things about lighthouses to include that steps, in the early years, were built of wood. Since then, they have also been built of steel and or concrete.