D/S And A Lighthouse?

now you might be wondering why they chose this particular spot to build a lighthouse and the reason is is simply The lake here, Lake Huron, which is immense, to try and give you a little perspective if you're not familiar with it, most people can picture the state of California.

And Lake Huron has more shoreline than the state of California.

So that's how vast it is.

And in fact, 10 miles north of here, the lake is 25 to 30 miles wide.

And it funnels down to this point.

where it flows into the St. Clair River, and it gets about 800 feet wide.

So it's a very narrow passage that the lighthouse has marked for 197 years now.

Three years, this beautiful lighthouse turns 200.

So that's kind of cool.

And the reason why we're here and talking about a lighthouse rather than DS, we'll get to the DS part.

But as you know, I go by the Lightkeeper online.

So of thought it'd be a fitting fitting thing to do to take you around my my favorite lighthouse and then once we get done with that we'll talk a little bit about the ds part of it at the end so um the original lighthouse was built a little bit off over this way closer to the lake in um 1825 i have my notes here and it lasted all of three years because They didn't build it really well, and they built it really close to the shoreline.

So there was a huge three-day storm in 1828 that literally washed it away.

The waves came up, washed away the base, and it was gone.

But at that time, the United States had a functioning federal government who quickly... appropriated the funds and in less than a year this light tower was erected right here they did add to it they added about 20 feet to it a couple years later to make it higher so that its beam even when it was fired by oil and You know, it had lenses and it had a light keeper that had to go polish them every day to keep them bright and shiny.

Its beam could be seen 17 miles out into the lake.

So it was a great, great position and a great guide.

The lighthouse was originally under the purview of the, at the time, what was it called here? totally lost my train of thought, bear with me, and I didn't want to look at my notes like this, but it was the US Lighthouse Service that had jurisdiction over the lighthouse.

They hired the light keepers, the assistant light keepers, and basically they built this beautiful spot, which is now a park, which is great and fantastic.

When I was a child, this was a Coast Guard station, so I would probably be going to federal prison back when I was a child for standing here trying to do this.

But now thankfully it's a park and everyone can have access to this beautiful spot.

But in 1939, the lighthouse was transferred over to the U.S. Coast Guard, and this light station became a Coast Guard station.

And at that point, public access was limited right up until it was decommissioned in 2011.

Now it's parked.

The lighthouse still lights.