Split Rock Lighthouse Weblog

On Thursday, June 25, the contractors who had been completing the masonry repairs to Split Rock Lighthouse removed all of the scaffolding that had been surrounding the lighthouse since early April.  For the many visitors who had been disappointed to find scaffolding blocking their view and photo opportunities this comes as welcome news.

On Friday, a beautiful morning of calm winds and sunny skies, I talked the foreman of the construction crew into taking me up in their lift so I could get a few pictures of the freshly painted lighthouse.  Here is view from eighty feet above the ground.

In addition, the concrete portions of the lighthouse have been painted and the lighthouse is looking pretty spiffy.

The intent, of course, is to retain the 1920’s appearance of the lighthouse and the light station as much as possible.  The early 1920’s was a time when the lighthouse was accessible only by boat from Lake Superior.  The North Shore highway was completed past Split Rock in 1924 forever changing the isolated nature of the site and the lives of the keepers and their families that lived here.

Summer has finally come to the North Shore and to Split Rock Lighthouse after a very long, cold winter and a long, cool spring.  Until this week the east winds off of Lake Superior were keeping daily temperatures in the forties and fifties with a few stray days in the sixties.

With this warmer weather and west and southwest breezes has come warmer and more humid air.  Of course, this moist warm air hitting the still very cool water of the Lake Superior is making for some foggy weather.  For the lightkeepers at Split Rock, June has always been one of the foggier months and the sounding of the foghorn could be needed for several days in a row.

Yesterday, with the fog hanging low on the lake ships passing miles out on the lake could be heard sounding their horns.   Although the Split Rock foghorn is no longer in use and no longer needed you can still hear what a Type-F diaphone foghorn sounds like on the Split Rock Lighthouse website.

The annual Children’s Day at Split Rock will take place this Saturday, June 27, and the weather promises to continue very nice through the weekend.  Get out and enjoy it.