Lighthouse Travels

This map may help readers understand our travels described in this post. The Ashland Breakwater Lighthouse that we visited is not depicted on this map, but it is south of the two lighthouses on Long Island and due east of Washburn, at the bottom-center of the map.

After finishing our second round of volunteering on Sand Island we decided to make a concerted effort to visit all nine of the lighthouses in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. We had already been to four of them (counting Sand Island), so how hard could it be?

Actually, a bit more difficult than it might sound. However, the two lighthouses that are the farthest away from Bayfield – Outer Island and Devils Island – both had tour boats making special runs last week. So we booked those and then contracted a “water taxi” to take us to the other three; the LaPointe and Chequamegon Lights on Long Island and the Ashland Breakwater Light just a few miles across Chequamegon Bay from our summer home in Washburn.

While we saw all five of the lighthouses we were able to make landing and “touch” only three of them and we got inside of, and to the top of, just two. We also made an unplanned “consolation” visit to the two lighthouses on Michigan Island, which we had visited earlier in the summer.

We were a little disappointed that the cruise boat was unable to land at the dock at Outer Island in what seemed to be fairly calm wind and wave conditions. However, we were ecstatic to find a USGS crew working to install a weather station in the Ashland Breakwater Lighthouse when we arrived there on our "taxi". The USGS crew “allowed” us to clamber up to the top of the tower of this lighthouse that was built in 1915 but included in the National Lakeshore by, literally, an Act of Congress just last year (who says Congress never does anything?).

We also really enjoyed our trip to Devils Island, which is the northernmost land point in Wisconsin and home to some of the most spectacular sandstone sea caves in the world. Click on the link to check out this video of the caves shot from a point as far north as you can go in Wisconsin without getting wet. It was a beautiful day and there were plenty of bald eagles flying around.

 Here is the photo recap of our attempts to visit these five lighthouses.

A lot of people who have been to all of the lighthouses in the Apostles say that Outer Island's is the best. But this is as close as we got to finding out if that's true or not.

We had not planned to return here to Michigan Island, with the old lighthouse and newer tower, but it is still a beautiful place!

The coolest thing about our "water taxi" was that it picked us up just a few hundred yards from our "home" in Washburn.

What a pleasant surprise to find this Ashland lighthouse open and operating.

The Ashland Breakwater Light was added to the Lakeshore as its ninth lighthouse in 2015.

Theoretically, you might be able to walk out the jetty to this lighthouse but we are glad we took the "taxi".

Taxi! Taxi!!

The Chequamegon Lighthouse sits at the tip of Long Island and is not easy to get to.

We settled for this view.

However, at the LaPointe Lighthouse, which is about a mile away on Long Island, we waded ashore.

...and back of course.

This lighthouse was supposed to be the first light location in the Apostles, ended up being the second, and then had to be rebuilt here in 1897.

Because it had a labor-intensive foghorn in addition to a lighthouse there were two assistants in addition to the lighthouse keeper and they all lived here with their families.

On Sand Island we often look over at Devils Island 12 miles to the northeast. On our trip to Devil's we got to see what Sand looks like from Devils (on the rightmost tip in the distance).

The landing on the south tip of Devils Island.

The one-mile hike to the lighthouse on the north end of the island.

A view of the Devils Tower and keepers'quarters over the sandstone sea caves.

Augustine Fresnel received France's highest honors when he invented this lens in 1822 and King Louis XVIII himself attended a demonstration at a lighthouse on the French coast. Devils is the only lighthouse in the Apostles with the original Fresnel lens still in the tower.