| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Historic Preservation. TOWER ENCASED IN STEEL IN 1901.
Hair-raising tales hardly exaggerate the very real perils of Great Lakes navigation: raging gales that can overwhelm even the largest vessels, shoals and reefs that can rip ships apart and send them quickly to the bottom. The Door Peninsula, with its rugged coastline, hidden offshore rocks, and propensity for sudden storms, poses great hazards, especially at the northern tip, through the strait called “Death’s Door.” The Sturgeon Bay-Lake Michigan Ship Canal, which opened in 1881, eliminated that notorious passage, but sailors still relied heavily on lighthouses and other navigational aids along both sides of the peninsula. Many of these ships carried lumber from Wisconsin’s then-abundant forests, heading out of Green Bay for ports in Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, and Buffalo.
In 1869, when it built the Baileys Harbor Range Lights (DR10), the federal Lighthouse Board also erected the Cana Island light, situating it between North and Moonlight bays, two harbors where ships could take refuge during storms. The yellow-brick tower, which tapers to a steel-bracketed deck and iron railing, is linked by a passageway to the keeper's brick residence. The lighthouse survived one of the worst gales ever to hit the area in 1880, when waves broke over the keeper's residence, and spray, at times, completely covered the lantern, eighty-eight feet above the lake. In 1901 the tower received a new steel shell, painted white. Today, visitors can walk to Cana Island, a wildlife sanctuary, over a gravel causeway, built about 1917.
A Historic Structure Report of this building can be found in Room 312 at the Wisconsin Historical Society. |
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