![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
Lucky Wisconsin — it has not one Great Lake, but two.
That means it's got lots of scenic coastline, lined with cliffs, beaches, islands — and lighthouses.
To many, lighthouses are irresistibly romantic. In a harsh environment, they were outposts of civilization, and their keepers often became heroes, saving the lives of shipwrecked sailors.
Many people turn lighthouses into a hobby. In summer, they travel from beacon to beacon, photographing them and collecting stamps in their U.S. Lighthouse Society passports until they've got 60 and can move onto the next passport and, eventually, the "Platinum Circle'' patch awarded after 240 lighthouse visits.
It's not easy to get to every lighthouse, however. Many are on islands or inaccessible by car, so aficionados are quick to sign up for the special boat trips offered during lighthouse festivals.
Below are some of the cruises that will take visitors to lights in the western Great Lakes in 2009. On many, places go
quickly.
Around the Great Lakes, love for lighthouses is unlimited. Often called "America's castles,'' lighthouses are symbols of a more adventurous era, and tourists find them irresistible.
"They work their way up the coast seeing all the lighthouses,'' says Ronda Werner of Michigan's Tawas Point Light. "They bring their lighthouse book and want stamps in their passports, and they're all decked out in their lighthouse shirts and their little lighthouse earrings. It's wonderful so many people have this much passion for our lighthouses.''
Now, the state parks and friends associations who care for them have found a way to harness all this passion: They're turning tourists into volunteer keepers. Every year, the 1869 Tawas Point Light on Michigan's Lake Huron coast takes applications for keepers to live on a sandy spit often called "the Cape Cod of the Midwest.''
When Lake Superior lighthouses had keepers, there was nothing romantic about life there.
The posts were cold, lonely and meagerly furnished on the government dime. The work was physically taxing and repetitive. Through the long nights, keepers had to get up every two hours to wind the mechanism that rotated the lens.
It's no wonder many of the early lighthouse keepers were hermits or grouches.
Once, passenger trains crisscrossed the state, and lighthouses guided sailors on the Great Lakes.
Trains and lighthouses are beloved relics now, symbols of a simpler past. In the iPod era, they seem antique, like Grandpa's buggy or Grandma's butter churn.
But don't relegate them to history's dustbin just yet.
A century ago, in the Apostle Islands, only seven puny shafts of light stood between sailors and catastrophe.
Lake Superior has been called the most dangerous body of water in the world, an inland teakettle in which any tempest can be deadly. Storms gather fury over 200 miles of open water, and heaven help mariners caught between wind and rock — heaven, or a lighthouse keeper with sharp eyes.
During a ferocious storm in September 1905, Outer Island lighthouse keeper John Irvine saw a lifeboat leave the foundering schooner Pretoria and then capsize offshore; five men drowned, but the 60-year-old keeper was able to pull the remaining five ashore.