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.
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