From seven miles away, the Toledo Harbor Lighthouse looks like an irregular, gray blotch on the hazy horizon. It could be a ship; it could be a lighthouse. It could be one of those foam fingers they sell at ball games.
As you draw nearer, the wind and spray turning your hair into a comb's worst nightmare, the indistinct shape suddenly resolves itself into a graceful tan building with a black light tower. If the humidity's high enough, the fog signal sounds.
For nearly a century, the Toledo Harbor light has stood in Lake Erie, guiding ships and smaller craft into the harbor. With today's Global Positioning System's satellites, mariners no longer need lighthouses. But just as instrument-rated pilots gain comfort from being able to spot landmarks, boaters like the sense of security the sight of a lighthouse gives them.
“What a reassuring feeling that gives you, that figure of stability,” said Terry “Murphy” Murray, a boater and a lighthouse model artist/builder. “There it is. We're where we should be. It's always nice to see that lighthouse.”
These days, most lighthouses, or lights, attract more than boaters. Indeed, an entire sub-culture of light buffs seems to exist.
While this lighthouse is one of the hardest for light buffs to spot - you have to know someone with a boat - people are flocking to its land-based brethren. Around the Great Lakes and the United States, people visit and photograph lighthouses in ever-increasing numbers. Some folks even plan their vacations around lighthouses.
Just ask Jeff Gamble. With his wife, Linda, and business partner, John Gale, he owns the Big Bay Point Lighthouse Bed and Breakfast northwest of Marquette on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Getting to their inn takes an act of will - “it's at the end of a very long road,” as Mr. Gamble said.
Still, some 2,500 people annually take the $2 tour the Gambles give three times a week, Mr. Gamble said. He estimated that 200,000 people a year walk their grounds to check out the lighthouse and the splendid view of Lake Superior.
“On a good day, we'll have 100 people out there,” the former Chicago resident said. “And there's no way to stop people from ringing the bell and asking to climb the tower.”
Closer to Toledo, the Marblehead lighthouse and keeper's house receive thousands of visitors annually, too.
“Attendance has been on the increase in the last several years,” said Scott Doty, park manager for the Lake Erie Islands State Park, which includes Marblehead. Last year, an estimated 252,700 people visited and toured the site.
“We're averaging just over 300 to 400 per afternoon going through the keeper's house,” Mr. Doty said. “We can run 100 people through the lighthouse in an hour, and we have four hours of that every day, too.”
As folks visit, they often buy art and three-dimensional lighthouse models to commemorate their trips, not to mention eating in local restaurants and staying at local hotels (and sometimes even in lighthouses converted into bed and breakfasts, such as the Big Bay Point inn).
“There's something about a lighthouse,” said Tim Harrison, co-founder and co-owner of the Wells, Maine-based Lighthouse Depot store and Lighthouse Digest magazine. “It's peaceful. It's romantic. A lighthouse has love, romance, history, bravery, heroism, ghost stories - all interesting things people want to know about. You can't say a bad thing about a lighthouse.”
Even state governments are using lighthouses as lures to draw tourists and dollars. Michigan's welcome center on I-75 has a tall replica of a lighthouse, while the state Department of Transportation's highway map features a lighthouse on its cover, and a map of the sites of the state's 124 lights inside.
Yet lighthouses have not always enjoyed so much admiration from so many. History is full of stories of shore-dwelling people who regarded the contents of wrecked ships as their rightful due; many lured ships into treacherous waters by placing false signals on the shores.
More recently, vandals and vagrants have targeted abandoned lighthouses. Even the United States military used the old lighthouse at Waugoshance (on Lake Michigan) for bombing practice during World War II, according to author Wes Oleszewski in Great Lakes Lighthouses, American and Canadian (Avery Color Studios, $16.95).
Why such a resurgence in interest after that mid-century low point? Mr. Murray, the Toledo-based lighthouse model craftsman, believes it has several factors. He credits Maumee native James Hyland, who formed the Lighthouse Preservation Society in 1984, with starting the modern movement by alerting Congress to the decay rampant among the historic structures.
Mr. Harrison's Lighthouse Digest and Lighthouse Depot catalog also raised the profile of the lighthouses, Mr. Murphy said. (Mr. Harrison said the circulation of the catalog alone has risen from 300,000 in 1994 to 8 million now. The Web site receives about 4 million hits a month, he added.)
Lighthouses also have a spiritual significance, Mr. Hyland said.
“It's the powerful symbol of light in the darkness, dispersing fear and doubt,” Mr. Hyland said. “It's like the night light in a room when you're a child.
“It is a religious symbol in a number of ways,” he added. “The subject of light and darkness is a strong theme throughout the scriptures. The Bible begins and ends with light.”
Plus, most lighthouses have distinctive architectural elements. “They're certainly places of great beauty both in terms of locations in general and their architecture,” Mr. Hyland said. “They're all different. They're like people that way.”
And the Toledo light, with its Romanesque lines, “is surely one of the architectural wonders of the Great Lakes,” wrote Ray Jones in American Lighthouses: A Comprehensive Guide (Globe Pequot Press, $21.95).
Add to this mix the general increase of interest in history, the information explosion caused by the Internet, plus the human foible of wanting to collect things, and you've got yourself a movement that shows few signs of slowing down.
“People fall in love at lighthouses, they get married at lighthouses, they have their ashes scattered at lighthouses,” Mr. Harrison said.
“There's a lot of emotion involved with this,” Mr. Murray agreed. “You can tie sadness into lighthouses as well as you can happiness.
“It never stops.”
First Published August 12, 2001, 1:22 p.m.
