![]() ![]() Every five hours, the keeper would have to wind up a weight that powered the clockwork mechanism and dropped roughly the full height of the tower. ![]() The eclipse was produced by a hood around the lamp that was raised and lowered by a clockwork mechanism. ![]() Fresnel lens was installed in place of the old fifth-order lens, increasing the power of the light and changing its characteristic to twenty-five seconds of white light, followed by a five-second eclipse. On September 1, 1891, a new fourth-order, Sautter, Lemmonier, & Cie. All the necessary timber for the work was obtained on the nearby beach, and the fill was again from the old lighthouse, so the only expense was labor. ![]() Additional cribwork protection was added the following year to the north and southwest sides of the station. In September 1884, a crib protection, 130 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 4 feet high, was added to the northwest corner of the lighthouse’s existing cribwork and filled with stone and brick cannibalized from the old lighthouse. Connected to the tower by a covered passageway was a redbrick, two-story dwelling that had eight rooms for the keeper and his family. The new, conical tower measured sixty-seven feet, three inches, from its base to the ventilator ball atop its decagonal lantern room, and its diameter tapered from sixteen feet to nine feet, eight inches. During the winter, the Fresnel lens was transferred from the old tower to the new tower, and the light was exhibited from the new lighthouse on the opening of navigation in 1877. Work on the tower and dwelling began on Augand was finished by the end of the year. On March 3, 1875, Congress appropriated $30,000 for a “light-house on Ottawa Point, or for range to guide into Tawas Bay, on the northeast shore of Saginaw Bay, to be known as Tawas Light.” The Lighthouse Board decided to build the new lighthouse on a shoal, south of Tawas Point, in four feet of water. Instead, the Lighthouse Board requested $30,000 for a new lighthouse or possibly a set of range lights to guide mariners into the protected waters of Tawas Bay. These repairs, however, were not made, as the point on which the lighthouse stood had steadily grown to the south, leaving the light over a mile inland. The plaster had fallen off the outside of the tower, the lantern room was leaky, and the dwelling needed a cistern and a new floor for its kitchen. By 1869, the station was in desperate need of repairs. Sherman Wheeler was hired as the first keeper of the light at an annual salary of $350, and he moved into a five-room, one-and-a-half-story, brick dwelling that measured thirty-four by nineteen-and-a-half-feet and had an attached kitchen. In 1856, a fifth-order Fresnel lens replaced the array of lamps and reflectors, and the characteristic of the light was changed to fixed white varied every ninety seconds by a red flash. A forty-five-foot-tall, rubblestone tower, which tapered from a diameter of twelve feet at its base to six feet, four inches at its octagonal cast-iron lantern room, was completed that year and, at the opening of navigation in 1853, started displaying a fixed white light produced by seven lamps set in fourteen-inch reflectors. On September 28, 1850, Congress appropriated $5,000 for a lighthouse at Ottawa Point, and work on the thirty-acre site commenced in 1852, after it had been acquired from Daniel S. The “s” was later dropped to get Ottawa, and finally the name was change to Tawas, something a bit closer to the chief’s name.Ĭrew from Ottawa Point Life Saving Station, established in 1876, with original lighthouse in background Early map makers, added an extra “t,” to form the name Ottawas. The point and bay were named after Chief O-ta-was, the leader of a tribe of the Saginaw band of Chippewas. Lengthy Tawas Point, formerly known as Ottawa Point, lies near the northern entrance to Saginaw Bay and also forms the protected anchorage in Tawas Bay. ![]()
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