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Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160272 03/01/02 11:05 PM
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Brazos Santiago Light - Texas

The keeper exhibited the light on March 1, 1879. Rebuilt in 1943, the light is still active and remains the last United States lighthouse before reaching the Mexican border.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160273 03/02/02 03:14 PM
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Fort Point Light - San Francisco, California

The district inspector had a new tower at Fort Point erected and lighted it on March 21, 1855.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010803021818/www.nps.gov/fopo/

[This message has been edited by Randy Kremer (edited 03-02-2002).]

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160274 03/02/02 05:34 PM
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MARCH 1, 1906...MUKILTEO LIGHTHOUSE FIRST LIT.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160275 03/04/02 08:37 PM
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Heceta Head Light - Oregon

On March 30, 1894, the keeper displayed the Heceta Head light for the first time. It was a coast light with a first-order lens. The white, conical masonry tower's light is 56 feet above the ground, but 206 feet above sea level; it is visible over twenty-one miles.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160276 03/05/02 06:26 PM
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Southeast Five Fingers Island - Alaska

In June, 1901, a year after the appropriation, the Lighthouse Board contracted to build a lighthouse at Southeast Five Fingers Island. Work on it was completed the following year, and on March 1, 1902, this light went into service.

[This message has been edited by Randy Kremer (edited 03-05-2002).]

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160277 03/06/02 06:54 PM
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Sentinel Island Light - Alaska

Construction on Sentinel Island Lighthouse began in June, 1901. On March 1, 1902, this lighthouse went into service.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160278 03/08/02 06:50 PM
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St. Simons Lighthouse - Georgia

Lighthouse Keepers and their assistants were not always the closest of friends. One Sunday morning in March 1880, the St. Simons Keeper, Fred Osborn, fought a duel with his assistant keeper on the front lawn of the lighthouse. The assistant got the better of the fight and shot Osborn dead.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160279 03/09/02 03:32 PM
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Carysfort Reef Lighthouse - Florida

Carysfort Reef Lighthouse was illuminated in March 1852. Using a marine construction technique developed by English Engineer Alexander Mitchell, George Gordon Meade anchored Carysfort Lighthouse's nine iron legs to the reef by means of hugh flanged feet inserted through stablizing discs. A keeper's house was built into the tower 33 feet the above water, and a central stair cylinder led to the lantern 112 feet above the sea.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160280 03/10/02 10:57 PM
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Minots Ledge - Massachusetts

The first Minots Ledge Lighthouse was in serious danger in March, 1851. Huge, rolling waves pounded the tower incessantly. At some point on the afternoon of March 17, 1851, the steel skeleton lurched and began to lean. With each passing wave the lean grew worse until, at last, the tower could take no more, and fell into the ocean. Two men, Joseph Wilson and Joseph Antoine, died in the destruction of this lighthouse.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160281 03/11/02 10:25 PM
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St. Marks Lighthouse - Florida

During the Civil War, many military skirmishes were conducted in its immediate area. On March 4, 1865, one of the largest efforts launched against the Rebels in the interior of West Florida began with a landing of a thousand federal troops at St. Marks Light.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160282 03/14/02 02:20 AM
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Crisp's Point Light - 1904

In June, 1902, Congress appropriated $18,000 and construction began in 1903. The new light went into service on March 5, 1904,exhibiting a fixed red Fourth Order Fresnel lens made by Sautter & Lemonnier of Paris.

[This message has been edited by Randy Kremer (edited 03-13-2002).]

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160283 03/14/02 11:26 PM
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Grosse Point Light - Illinois

By 1870, the city of Chicago received more than a thousand vessels a month. Congress appropriated $35,000 in March, 1871, and an additional $15,000 in March, 1873 for the construction of a Second Order coastal light at Grosse Point. The light station included a conical brick tower, 90 feet tall, an adjoining duplex keeper's dwelling, and two brick fog signal buildings added in 1880.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160284 03/15/02 06:25 PM
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Umpqua River Light - Oregon

The first appropriation for the Umpqua River Light Station was made on March 3, 1851 when the sum of $15,000 was set aside by Congress for a lighthouse and a fog signal.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160285 03/16/02 05:34 PM
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Cape Decision Light - Alaska

An early attempt was made to warn mariners of the cape's dangers by placing an acetylene light on nearby Spanish Islands, but the light was ineffective. The Lighthouse Service pushed for the light station and finally received Congress's initial appropriation of $59,400 in July 1929. Mean-spirited weather and incomplete funding slowed the work, however, and it wasn't until March 15, 1932, that Cape Decision was finally commissioned, at a total cost of $158,000.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160286 03/17/02 07:54 PM
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Lighting the Texas Coast

On March 3, 1849, Congress appropriated funds for the construction and placement of a lightship to mark the entry to Galveston Harbor. When the vessel arrived in October, 1849, it became the first federally funded light on the Texas coast.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160287 03/18/02 09:30 PM
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Brazos Santiago Light - Texas

On the eve of World War II, on March 7, 1940, a message went out on Coast Guard radio station as a notice to mariners: "Brazos Santiago Lighthouse superstructure reported destroyed by fire...light and radiobeacon out of commission." A fire that day swept through the sixty-one-year-old wooden superstructure of the Brazos Santiago station, completely destroying it and damaging the upper ends of the wrought iron piles.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160288 03/19/02 08:39 PM
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Point Isabel - Texas

In early spring of 1853, construction was finally completed on the whitewashed lighthouse, and its light was exhibited for the first time on the night of March 20, 1853.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160289 03/20/02 09:30 PM
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Point Isabel - Texas

In March, 1860, the Point Isabel Light Station gained the distinction of becoming one of the handful of known lighthouses on the Texas coast to have its own female keeper, Hannah Hain, who succeeded her husband in the post after his death.

The Civil War cut short Mrs. Hain's career at the Point Isabel Lighthouse, for along with all the other lights on the Texas coast, it dimmed shortly after Texas' secession from the Union in the spring of 1861.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160290 03/21/02 10:01 PM
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Aransas Pass - Texas

Less than six years after Texas' entry into the union, the U.S. Congress on March 3, 1851, appropriated $12,500 for the costruction of a lighthouse to mark the entry at Aransas Pass, but there were several delays in its eventual erection.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160291 03/22/02 10:51 PM
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Sombrero Key Light - Florida

On March 17, 1858, the light on Sombrero Key Lighthouse beamed for the first time through its powerful lens. The total cost has been reported as $120,000, but appropriations show a total expenditure of $153,158.81 - considerably more than estimated, but far less than a masonry structure.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160292 03/25/02 10:40 PM
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Rescue by Ida Lewis

Ida Lewis effected several more dramatic rescues, but the one that earned her nationwide fame took place in the winter gale on March 29,1869. She was sick with a severe cold at the time and huddled beside the kitchen stove much of the day. Late in the day her mother cried out to her. The big waves churned up by the storm had thrown over a boat in the harbor, and men were drowning. Although her mother tried to stop her, Ida ran for the lifeboat. With no shoes and her stockinged feet immersed in freezing water, she fought off one big wave after another. If she had reached the capsized boat only a few moments later, the two numb and exhausted soldiers struggling nearby would haved slipped under the water. Ida pulled them aboard, but the rescue would not be a complete success. Although she rowed in circles and called out, the boy who had piloted the soldiers' boat did not answer. He was gone forever.

The story of this exploit reached the pages of most of the major newspapers in the country. Engraved pictures of Ida and her Lime Rock Lighthouse were published in Leslie's magazine and in Harper's Weekly.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160293 03/26/02 10:37 PM
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Rescue at Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse

On March 3, 1947, the coal freighter Oakley L. Alexander ran head-on into a strom so violent that the ship was broken in half. All thirty-two members of the ship's crew managed to clamber aboard the stern section, which continued to float. The accident took place more than eight miles from shore, but luckily for the crew, the wind was blowing toward land. The stern ended up on the rocks near Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse. Using a lifesaving device called a Lyle gun, Coast Guardsman Earle Drinkwater fired a line over the stern and started hauling men ashore. Eventually, he was able to save the entire crew.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160294 03/27/02 10:13 PM
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Old Mackinac Point Light - Michigan

On March 3, 1891, Congress appropriated $20,000 to build this lighthouse. The buff-colored brick tower and attached keeper's dwelling were completed on October 27, 1892. The fourth-order lens light atop the tower had gone into service on the night of October 25, 1892.

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160295 03/28/02 10:13 PM
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Sabine Bank Lighthouse - Texas

As the freighter traffic into Port Arthur grew, this dangerous shoal exacted an increasing toll of ships and sailors. To warn mariners, lighthouse officials decided to place a navigational light directly over the shoal. A foundry in Detroit assembled the tanklike iron tower and shipped it to the Gulf, where it was placed atop a massive concrete caisson. Lamps inside the station's third-order Fresnel lens were first lit on March 15, 1906.
[This message has been edited by Randy Kremer (edited 03-28-2002).]

Re: Lighthouse Dates To Remember - March #160296 03/29/02 08:57 PM
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The Pacific Coast's first fog signal

The Pacific Coast's first fog signal was an Army surplus cannon placed at Point Bonita Light Station at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. The cannon was officially placed in service on August 1856, and during foggy periods was fired every half hour. The 24 pounder taken from the Benicia Arsenal was placed in charge of Sgt. Maloney, who had retired from the Army. With an average of 1,000 hours of fog annually, the old vet wore himself out, often working 24 hours around-the-clock with no relief. The inspector finally had mercy and sent him an assistant. The troublesome weapon was terminated on March 18, 1858 when a fogbell was installed. The old firing piece still survives as a museum attraction, its role having pioneered thousands of fog signals of gradually improving caliber that have honked their dismal cries at stations all along the Pacific rim.


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