Stannard Rock Light

The Stannard Rock Lighthouse is a lighthouse on a reef, which once represented the greatest danger to navigation on Lake Superior. The basis on which the lighthouse is built, is considered one of the greatest engineering achievements in the United States. The lighthouse is located 39 km distance from the shore, making it the landfernste lighthouse in the United States. The lighthouse was automated in 1962 and is maintained as a navigation aid by the United States Coast Guard today. The tower is not open to the public and its light is not visible because of the great distance from land. The building was in 1971 entered in the National Register of Historic Places.

Stannard Rock Reef

The Stannard Rock Reef is located off the Keweenaw Peninsula, about 39 km south-east of Manitou Iceland and 71 kilometers north of Marquette, Michigan. Charles C. Stannard, the ship's captain John Jacob Astor in 1835 discovered that mountain located below the water surface, which up to 1.2 m rises on an area of 0.6 km ² below the water surface, while the surrounding average water depth of about 165 m amounts. This shoal was a very great danger to the boat trip on the lake and was marked 1868. The opening of the Soo Locks and the rapid rise of merchant shipping between Duluth, Minnesota and the lower Great Lakes made ​​the construction of a lighthouse required. The lighthouse was named in honor of the discoverer of the shoal Stannard Rock Lighthouse.

Building

The construction of the lighthouse and its protective base design was based on Spectacle Reef Light on Lake Huron, which was completed in 1877. The devices, which were used in its construction, was brought to the depot at the Huron Bay of Lake Superior, where in July 1877 began the construction of the basis for the Stannard Rock Lighthouse. In August 1877 they were transported the components on a trial basis for Stannard rock to put the anchors on the reef can. Then they brought the structure back to Huron Bay, where it was built on it. In August 1878, the final design was based on the type of cofferdam again transported to Stannard Rock brought to the reef in position. By October 1878, was filled with concrete and stones that you brought here by a specially created quarry on Huron Iceland. In June 1879, construction of the steel investor the water surface and the tower reached the middle of 1880 a height of 4.3 m above the water surface. At the lighthouse was built on until 1883, but the light was first lit on July 4, 1882. The cost of the five -year construction work amounted to 305,000 U.S. dollars. The basic structure on which the lighthouse is built, is considered one of the top ten engineering services in the United States.

Operation of the lighthouse

The beacon was only in the time of shipping season from March to early December in operation and only at this time the tower was occupied. Both the start-up in the spring as well as the retrieval of the team in the winter were difficult, as the winter storms large masses of ice piled around the tower and left thick layers of ice on the tower and the outdoor facilities. The guards had to remove with chisels and pickaxes 30-60 cm thick layers of ice from the front door, the light and the fog horns.

In case of illness, an accident or a fire could take days or more than a week, until help arrived. As in the lighthouse, the guards without their families were on duty, the Stannard Rock Lighthouse was nicknamed " The Loneliest Place in the World" - the loneliest place in the world.

More than 60 years the beacon was operated with fuels. Only after the Second World War, the lighthouse was electrified. 1962 came by a short circuit to the explosion of tanks for diesel, with the generators of the station were driven. The explosion destroyed the building on the investors and damaged the interior of the lighthouse difficult. One guard was killed and the other three had to endure three days on the concrete platform at the foot of the lighthouse until they were seen by a passing ship. This alerted the Coast Guard, which brought the three men with the supply ship Woodrush to safety.

After the accident, the United States Coast Guard removed the damage, but decided that the station is too remote and too dangerous, and automated the system. The old lighthouse with a light intensity of 1,400,000 Candela has been replaced by a much weaker at 3,000 candelas. The Coast Guard removed the Fresnel lens and packed the parts into six wooden boxes. After the shipment was lost track of the boxes until they were 37 years later found in a warehouse of the Coast Guard Academy in New London. The look is now exhibited in the Museum Marquette Maritime, located at the Marquette Harbor Light.

The lighthouse is part of the U.S. Coast Guard, serving for more than a century of operation still to help in navigation. Since 2008, the lighthouse met yet another object: Scientists installed measuring instruments at the top of the tower to thereby determine whether increased evaporation, which is associated with global warming, is responsible for the fall in water levels in the Great Lakes.