7/13 - Marquette

The weather today has been a repeat of yesterday but with real rain. (Yesterday it just thought about it.)  It's our last day here so we ventured out anyway, knowing we wouldn't be able to see much with the poor visibility.


On our way to Marquette we saw a Gander Mountain store with big "store closing" signs and had to stop. Jim's fishing gear is all ancient (35 to 40 years old), not old enough to be antique but too old to work reliably.  He's lost several lures because of reel malfunctions. The stop at Gander Mountain was well worth it with everything at 40% off. He was able to get everything he needed so he's literally a happy camper.


We then headed for the Marquette Maritime Museum which is right on the lake.

Marquette Maritime Museum and Lake Superior

It's a small museum but has interesting information about the lake and the ships that have traveled (or wrecked) on Superior.  The biggest single exhibit was on the SS Edmund Fitzgerald which went down with all 29 crew on November 10, 1975.  It's the most famous Lake Superior shipwreck thanks to Gordon Lightfoot's song which hit #1 in Canada and #2 in the U.S. on various charts in 1976.

Fresnel lens collection

The most interesting and beautiful things were the Fresnel lenses which ended up in the museum when they were replaced with automated lights.

This third order Fresnel lens was in the Stannard Rock lighthouse before it was automated in 1963. Stannard Rock is is a treacherous rock reef 45 miles out in the lake from Marquette. The lighthouse itself was an engineering marvel. The reef, which is the top of a submerged mountain, is extremely dangerous but has the distinction of never having a ship wreck on its rocks.

This lens weighs just under two tons and has a bullseye design which focuses the light so well it can be seen for over 18 miles. When the lens was replaced by an automated light it was dismantled, packed and taken to the Coast Guard station in Sault Ste Marie. The five boxes containing the pieces were stamped "Sault Ste Marie" and put in storage. People were searching for the Stannard Rock light but there had never been a lighthouse at the Soo so no one checked the boxes. They ended up at the Coast Guard facility in New London, CT, where they stayed lost for 37 years. Eventually someone got suspicious about the Soo boxes and opened them. The Marquette Maritime Museum pounced on the find and sent two people to Maryland (where the boxes had been moved) to fetch the lens and return it to its home. It took volunteers and restorers over 2000 hours of work to clean all the parts of the lens and put it back together. It's in very good shape although it does have one cracked bullseye section where it was hit by a Canada goose. The goose undoubtedly did not survive the encounter. Maybe the lighthouse keeper had goose for dinner.

Marquette Harbor Light 

The weather stayed wet and in the low 50's all day, rather like fall. We appreciated not being in the humid upper 80's at home.

Tomorrow we move 100 miles northwest to Ontonagon at the bottom of the Keweenaw Peninsula.