Split Rock Lighthouse
Interesting facts
- The rotating Fresnel lens floats on a bath of liquid mercury, letting the heavy glass assembly turn almost without friction.
- The lens is turned by clockwork driven by weights that descend through the centre of the tower, and the mechanism had to be wound by hand.
- The tower was designed for a larger second-order lens, but construction ran over budget and only a smaller third-order lens could be afforded.
- The lens was made in Paris by the firm Barbier, Bernard et Turenne, and its beam could be seen about 22 nautical miles away.
- The light burned kerosene vapour until 1940, when it was electrified with a 1,000-watt bulb.
- Lee Radzak served as the site's keeper and manager from 1982 to 2019, the longest tenure of anyone at Split Rock.
- In 1995 the US Postal Service put Split Rock on a stamp as one of five lights in its 'Lighthouses of the Great Lakes' series.
- The station was designed by Ralph Russell Tinkham, and its octagonal tower is built of brick over a steel frame.
- Split Rock was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2011.
- A fog signal, upgraded to a diaphone in 1936, once sounded from the station before being discontinued in 1961.
Why it is worth it
Split Rock Lighthouse stands at the edge of a 133-foot cliff above Lake Superior, a tower that seems to grow out of the dark rock of the North Shore. Seen from the shoreline below or from the headlands to either side, the scene looks more like a sea coast than a lake: sheer cliffs, forested ridges, and water stretching to the horizon. The tower itself is only 54 feet high; it is the cliff that gives it its presence.
It exists because of a disaster. In November 1905 the Mataafa Storm swept Lake Superior and some 29 ships were lost or damaged. The lighthouse followed, completed in 1910 for about $75,000 including buildings and land, and first lit on 31 July that year. There was no road: every brick, beam and piece of equipment came by water and was hoisted up the cliff by crane. The station's third-order bivalve Fresnel lens, a clamshell of glass prisms, still sits in the lantern. Only in 1924 did a road reach the site — the forerunner of today's Highway 61 — and the lighthouse began drawing visitors as much as sailors.
The Coast Guard decommissioned the light in 1969, and the station is now run by the Minnesota Historical Society within Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. The complex survives almost complete: tower and lens, fog-signal building, oil house and the three keepers' houses. Every year on 10 November the beacon is lit again in memory of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on Lake Superior on that date in 1975 — an evening when the old light shines out over the water it was built to guard.
Getting there
Split Rock is about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Duluth along Highway 61 and roughly 20 miles beyond Two Harbors, between Two Harbors and Silver Bay. Duluth International Airport (DLH) is about 75 km away in a straight line. The historic site and the state park, with its trails along the shore, share the approach off the highway.
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From the encyclopaedia
Split Rock Lighthouse is a lighthouse located southwest of Silver Bay, Minnesota, US on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The structure was designed by lighthouse engineer Ralph Russell Tinkham and was completed in 1910 by the United States Lighthouse Service for $75,000, including the buildings and the land. It is considered one of the most picturesque lighthouses in the United States.
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