Lighthouse · Two Harbors, Minnesota · Built 1891–1892
Two Harbors Lighthouse
Listed on the National Register as Two Harbors Light Station
A red-brick keeper's house and square tower of 1892 on the point between Agate and Burlington bays, built to guide ore boats into Minnesota's first iron-shipping harbor; its keeper's quarters were later let as a bed-and-breakfast.
History
Iron ore from the Vermilion Range began reaching Agate Bay by rail in 1884, and within a few years the little town of Two Harbors was loading more ore than Duluth. Freighters needed a mark for the harbor entrance, and the Lighthouse Board began a station on the point in 1891. The light was first shown on April 14, 1892, with Charles Lederle as keeper. A head keeper and normally two assistants kept it lit; the head keeper's family lived in the attached brick house, and an assistant had a separate frame dwelling. When the Mesabi Range opened in the 1890s its ore too went out through this harbor, and the station also gained a fog signal building, an oil house, a skiff house and a garage.
The keepers were withdrawn after automation. In 1969 or 1970 the Coast Guard took out the fourth-order Fresnel lens and put a rotating aerobeacon in the lantern, and the lens went on loan to a Great Lakes museum. The station was listed on the National Register in 1984. Four years later the Lake County Historical Society leased it and began offering tours; ownership passed to the society in 1999, the year it started taking bed-and-breakfast guests in the keeper's quarters, and in 2001 the society took over the light itself as a private aid to navigation. The original lens came back to Two Harbors in 2015. After the aerobeacon failed in November 2019 a temporary LED beacon was fitted the following summer.
“At the time the Two Harbors Light Station was completed in 1892, this was the major shipping point for the iron ores of the Mesabi Range, far surpassing Duluth in importance.”
Architecture
The keeper's house is a two-story red-brick block 35 feet square under paired gable roofs. The tower rises from one corner, about 12 feet 9 inches square and just under 50 feet to the ventilator ball, carrying an octagonal cast-iron lantern; the light stands 78 feet above the lake. Its walls are three bricks thick, thickening to five where tower and house meet. The design matches that of the Round Island Light in Michigan. The assistant keeper's house is an L-shaped frame building, and the gabled fog signal house measures 22 by 40 feet. With the brick oil house, skiff house and garage, they make up the full working complement of a Lake Superior light station of the 1890s.
What to look for
- Square brick tower with its octagonal iron lantern
- Thick brick walls where tower and house join
- Frame assistant keeper's house and the fog signal building
- Pilothouse of the ore boat Frontenac
- The Agate Bay ore docks across the water
Setting
The station sits on a low rocky point between Agate Bay, with its huge ore docks, and Burlington Bay, at the edge of Two Harbors on Minnesota's North Shore. The pilothouse of the ore boat Frontenac has been set on the grounds, and a breakwater walk leads out toward the harbor entrance the light was built to mark.
Timeline
- 1891Construction begins on the point
- 1892Light first shown on April 14
- 1969–1970Fresnel lens replaced by an aerobeacon
- 1984Listed on the National Register on July 19
- 1988Lake County Historical Society leases the station for tours
- 1999Society takes ownership; keeper's quarters open to overnight guests
- 2015Original lens returned to Two Harbors
Where sources differ
- Wikipedia dates the lens replacement to 1969; the HAER inventory form gives 1970.
- The National Register documentation is a brief HAER inventory sheet rather than a full nomination, so it says little about the station's history or later changes.
- Ore shipping through Agate Bay began with the Vermilion Range in 1884; the inventory form credits the harbor's importance to the Mesabi Range, which opened later in the 1890s.
