On Oct. 1, 1665, Jesuit Father Claude Allouez and Father Jacques Marquette arrived on Chequamegon Bay, La Pointe, and established the mission of the Holy Spirit. This was the first Catholic church/chapel anywhere on the North American continent north of New Mexico and west of Lake Huron.
On July 17, 1835, Fr. Frederic Baraga, the famed “snowshoe priest”, came to La Pointe on Madeline Island and re-established the Catholic mission, at the site of the La Pointe Indian Cemetery. Although the mission building is no longer extant, the old cemetery that remains is the burial place of Chief Buffalo, an important Chippewa leader.
With a congregation dating back to 1838, it is the oldest continuous Catholic parish in Wisconsin. The first St. Joseph church was built of logs and burned down in 1901 and the current church was rebuilt in 1902.
Congress appropriated funds for a lighthouse on Long Island in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior near Bayfield, Wisconsin but when workmen arrived to build it in 1853, a local representative of the Lighthouse Board, directed them to Michigan Island.
The light on Michigan Island entered service in the spring of 1857, but was closed after only one year of operation. Evidence suggests that higher authorities in the Lighthouse Service repudiated the rash decision of their field representative, and ordered the hapless contractors to go back and erect a new lighthouse at the planned Long Island location.
In 1869, however, authorities decided that a lighthouse on Michigan Island might actually be useful, so was $6000 requested to renovate and relight the abandoned station on Michigan Island.
Fifty years later, an effort began to place the Michigan Island light in a higher tower. When the Lighthouse Service discontinued operation of the Schooner’s Ledge light on Pennsylvania’s Delaware River near Philadelphia, the cylindrical steel tower was disassembled and brought to Wisconsin. Originally built in 1880, the tower was transported to Michigan Island in 1919, where it sat on the beach, awaiting assembly, for another ten years.
On October 29, 1929, the Fresnel lens was transferred from the old lighthouse to the new tower. “Started up new tower at sunset,” wrote Keeper Lane. “Everything in good shape but station looked odd, the old tower being dark for the first time in navigation in 72 years. NEW TOWER IN COMMISSION TONIGHT.”
The old Michigan Island Lighthouse is currently under repairs and Michigan Island is unique in that the old lighthouse was supposed to be built somewhere else and the newer lighthouse was originally built elsewhere.
This lonely sentinel, which was placed in operation on October 11, 1897, carried out years of service but it didn’t draw masses crowds to visit it like other lighthouses, especially with no land access. No fancy brick or stone building, no awestruck view, nor a fancy spiral staircase to take you to the top of the light, just a ladder for this short forty-two foot lighthouse.
There is not even a keeper’s house next to it for company, but instead the keeper came on a plank walk from the LaPointe Light Station, which was a little more than a quarter mile to the east, to wind up the weights for the 1,200 pound bronze fog bell every four hours.
So the lonely forgotten Chequamegon Point Light on the end of Long Island in the Apostle Islands, did its task without much recognition, with a re-used fourth-order lens from the old LaPointe Lighthouse, to guide ships into Ashland’s port with its fixed red light. The lighthouse had even less human interaction when the light was automated in 1964 until it was deactivated in 1986, replaced by the tubular structure that is now used.
In the middle of the Civil War, Raspberry Island Lighthouse’s fifth-order, fixed lens was exhibited for the first time on July 20, 1863 as part of the lighthouse system guiding sailors in the Apostle Islands area.
Isolated on an island may seem appealing to some but it also presented some hazards too. Light-keeper Francis Jacker was almost dismissed when his light was out on September 13, 1887. A westerly gale forced Keeper Jacker to move the station’s sailboat from the dock to a safe anchorage near the eastern end of the island. He was unable to haul the boat up to the boathouse due to the the dilapidated condition of the boatways and in the darkness, Keeper Jacker sailed beyond the end of the island.
Unable to fight the gale back, he drifted over to Oak Island, where his boat was heavily damaged. On the desolate island without food or fire and only scantily dressed, Jacker finally was able to hail a passing Native American after nearly three days.
The light was out the night of the 13th, but fortunately Keeper Jacker’s family had arrived for a visit on the 14th and displayed the light for two nights until his return. Lighthouse officials reinstated the position of assistant keeper, which had been abolished at Raspberry Island in 1882, after this incident and Keeper Francis Jacker was not discharged due to the credible reason for the outage.
When Devils Island Lighthouse was finally activated in 1901, it became the eighth and final lighthouse to be built in the Apostle Islands.
On March 2, 1889, Congress appropriated $15,000 for a lighthouse on Devils Island, the most northern in the Apostle Island archipelago. When finished, the lighthouse would serve as a coastal light, splitting the gap between Sand Island and Outer Island. It would replace the temporary wooden structure light which was lit on September 30, 1891.
The worked started on July 1, 1897 for the new lighthouse and was completed October 1898 but had to wait for the third-order Fresnel lens to arrive from France. It finally arrived at the station on June 22, 1901 and with a range of 13 mile, was placed in operation on September 20, 1901.
In September 1928, the lighthouse was visited President Calvin Coolidge and his wife during a vacation in northern Wisconsin. The lighthouse was automated 1978.
Lookout Point on Hermit Island of the Apostle Island was once a sea cave and then eroded to an arch until it collapse in the summer 1975.
Hermit Island got its name from a mysterious man who lived alone from 1847 to 1861. Few hard facts remain, including his name, although the old maps speak of this place as “Wilson’s Island.” Rumors has it that Wilson lit out for the wildest country he could find, trying to outrun his sadness of finding his parents dead and his intended bride married to someone else.
There on Hermit Island, Wilson built a log cabin after losing a fist fight and no longer the “best man on Lake Superior” and found his own island to be king on. He planted a garden, and raised chickens. To earn a few dollars, he kept up his work as a cooper. Fishermen would stop by to purchase barrels for their catch, but the Hermit did not encourage them to linger. Yet some writers say he had no need to raise cash. They say that on his rare trips to town, he attracted attention by paying for supplies from a purse filled with silver Mexican coins. Others whispered of a store of gold, buried somewhere near his cabin.
Although now labeled as wilderness, after the hermit died, Hermit Island was home to a number of quarries for its brownstone from the 1860s to the 1890s. And it appears that the birds like the point on Lookout Point as it is ‘white’ stone instead of brownstone.
