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Four-year-old Zackary Leslie thought he was just out for a trip on a boat and a visit to an island with his parents one sunny day in September. In truth, Zack was coming down with the lighthouse bug. One of the youngest participants in the Fourth Annual Apostle Islands Lighthouse Celebration, the preschooler had just come ashore on Outer Island. There he would climb with his parents Mary and Karl Leslie to the very top of the Outer Island Lighthouse, to get a good view of the western end of Lake Superior. "My wife is a lighthouse junkie,'' said Karl, an attorney from St. Cloud, MN.
"It's really a contagious thing."
There was lots of that contagion in evidence for three weeks in September in the Apostle Islands.
About 2,100 people attended the celebration, almost three times as many as the 775 who attended the Third Annual Apostle Islands Lighthouse Celebration a year earlier.
"Of course it was for three weeks this year," said Mary Grant, manager of the Keeper of the Light gift shop in Bayfield, which sponsored the celebration. The previous year, the celebration lasted only 10 days.
"The whole crowd tonight, practically was brand new. That's a good sign," Dave Strzok said after the end of the Keeper's Dinner, on Sept. 18, a highlight of the celebration. Strzok owns the Keeper of the Light gift shop and the Apostle Islands Cruise Service, which transported visitors to the six lighthouses of the Apostles during the celebration.
"A couple years before, it'd be we'd see the same people throughout the event,'' Grant said. "Now there are many new people," she said.
"One of the things I'm happy about is that it's a new group of people, because that's how it was designed to be, a cycle, and they get opportunities to do other and different things. It seems to be working that way,'' Strzok said."
For the fourth year in a row, the celebration was held after Labor Day, after some of the regular cruises of the Apostle Islands Cruise Service had stopped. Vessels and crew members that were kept busy with summertime cruises prior to Labor Day, could devote their attention to getting people out to lighthouses. Thus, while scheduled cruises normally only go to the historic light stations at Raspberry and Sand Island in the summer, they go to all six stations during the lighthouse celebration.
Although main attractions were scheduled trips to all of the lighthouses, there was more for lighthouse buffs to do than take a trip to a lighthouse. Lee Murdock, a balladeer who's released numerous CD/cassettes of Great Lakes music, appeared in concert at the Bayfield Waterfront Pavilion. Also at the Bayfield Waterfront Pavilion, Lee Radzak spoke during the Keeper's Dinner about the Split Rock Lighthouse, where he is site manager. Those attending the lighthouse celebration also could attend presentations on history of the Apostle Islands lighthouses at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore Visitor's Center. Or they could go to a night of "Lake Superior Songs & Lighthouse Lore" at the Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua tent theater nearby.
Nonetheless, what people really came for was to get to the premier collection of lighthouses in the National Park system. "The boats travelled 4,000 miles within the three weeks to get people out to all those lighthouses,'' Grant said. Sometimes, bad weather forced a cancellation, or high waves made it impossible to complete a transfer between a cruise vessel to a water taxi that would bring people to islands with lighthouses. "Old mother nature, we have to contend with her, and that's all there is to it," Grant said.
In previous years, the waves and weather worked together to make it almost impossible to land on Outer Island, located more than 30 miles northeast of Bayfield. There was only one successful landing before this year, during the 1998 celebration. However, this year, there were two successful landings on Outer Island, including the one that included Mary, Karl and Zackary Leslie. "I just like the nostalgic part of it. I think about the keepers that used to live out here," said Mary Leslie, a school teacher, explaining her interest.
Two others on that cruise, which included a stop at Michigan Island, were Deb and Jim Meyer, of Madison, Wisc. "We've been coming since the start of the lighthouse festival. Actually, we come up every year for Apple Fest," said Deb Meyer, referring to a popular fall event in Bayfield. "Once they started the lighthouse festival, then we started coming up for that as well . . . My husband actually is the lighthouse nut. He got me into them as well, a little bit. We just love seeing old lighthouses and they fascinate us.
Jim Meyer also used the word "Lighthouse nut" to describe himself. "The lore of what these people went through out on these islands, the hardships and yet the satisfaction of being in a position to save lives by their work really interests me. I'm very much a history buff. And that's what this is, it's history," he said, on the trip out to Outer Island. "We've been to every island lighthouse in the Apostles except Outer. This is our third try. The last two years we've been shut out. They cancelled the day we were supposed to go. Hopefully, it'll be done today."
And make it they did that day, both to the Outer Island Lighthouse and the one on Michigan Island Although they made it to both islands, not everybody made it to the top of all lighthouses on the tour. Zackary Leslie decided it was too much to go up the big tower on Michigan Island. "He said "'That was too scary,'" his mom said. While Zack refused to go up that one tower, he still busied himself with an activity enjoyed by many a keeper and his family: playing croquet.
The Fifth Annual Apostle Islands Lighthouse Celebration will be held Sept. 6-27, 2000. An event schedule will be ready in January 2000. Those wanting more information may call 715-779-5619 or 800-779-4487, write to Keeper of the Light, P.O. Box 990, 19 Front St., Bayfield, WI, 54814, or on the web at www.lighthousecelebration.com.
This story appeared in the
November 1999 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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