(gentle music) - [Sheila] When the lighthouses became available from the government, I started looking in terms of finding a summer home.

- [Richard] Our lighthouse is the last remaining free-standing wooden pier light on Lake Erie.

- [Lynda] The day the lighthouse was officially lit, that will be in our hearts forever.

(group applauding) - [John] Frequently when you're here, and you might be the only one here, you do hear different noises and you're not sure where they come from.

Who knows?

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Tom] So there's actually... There's two Vermilion lighthouses now.

There's a replica sitting out there.

And the original is still sitting in Lake Ontario.

Which is an interesting story.

(gentle music) - The lighthouse is very important to our family.

Especially because my father-in-law is one of the two young Wakefield boys who found the lighthouse tipping into the river.

- They were teenagers... Ted and Ernie.

They walked out on the pier and they noticed that the lighthouse was leaning toward the river.

And they told their father, Fred Wakefield, and he reported it to the Corps of Engineers.

And the next day an engineer came out here, looked at the lighthouse, condemned it.

And within 10 days it had been taken down, put on a barge, and they took it to Buffalo for scraping.

And the town was just horrified.

Because this was the icon of the town, of the village.

And it was just horrible to lose this.

So it went away and it was replaced then with a skeleton tower, a white skeleton tower.

All those years, Ted Wakefield, as he was growing up, he felt very guilty for the loss of the lighthouse.

In 1990, he decided to start a fundraising drive.

They got funds together to build a new one, a replica.

Which they did.

And that was erected in 1991.

Actually dedicated then in 1992.

Two months after that a pharologist, that's a person that studies lighthouses, a pharologist.

Looking through some documents and came to suspect that possibly the lighthouse on East Charity Shoals at the entrance to the St.

Lawrence River, might be the Vermilion lighthouse.

The guy that investigated the East Charity Shoals Lighthouse... He came back and reported that's definitely the Vermilion Lighthouse refurbished.

- [Lynda] My father-in-law, who spearheaded the committee to raise the money to build the replica, he lived in Harborview, which was the name of the home.

The house was built in 1909 by my husband's grandfather, F.W.

Wakefield.

And he had been in Cleveland, but he was a yachtsman and he came into Vermilion on his boat and fell in love with the harbor.

And chose this place to build his home.

And moved his business to Vermilion.

- He was a recreational sailor.

And so it was perfect for him and his family.

By the late 1940s, early 1950s, he had passed away.

That building was given to the Bowling Green Foundation.

And the Bowling Green Foundation leased it to us for a dollar a year to create a museum in the Wakefield home on Lake Erie.

(gentle music) We survived and lived, and thrived in Vermilion.

We wanted to take a new approach.

Which was not just to highlight some things that were of interest to us that we thought were important, we wanted to explore how Great Lakes history impacted this nation and this continent's history.

And so we began looking for a new home.

And that ended up being in Toledo.

(gentle music) We always had felt that Great Lakes history has not gotten its fair share of the national story.

Because what we argued is that what happens on the Great Lakes has impacted the contours of American historical development over 400 years.

And so we went through and said, "What are the stories that are Great Lakes at their heart that have national implications?"

And then we said, "What do we have in the collection that can help tell that story?"

So we have five fundamental exhibit areas.

The first one is our technology ring.

Which just explores using really cool artifacts how different aspects of ship building, and ship navigation, and ship construction have changed over time.

So it's really highlighting the technology of maritime life.

But then we get into our subsitive historical galleries.

And those start with exploration and settlement, which is about how the Great Lakes region, the old Northwest Territory, was explored and settled.

(gentle music) Moving on to expansion and industry.

Which develops in the 19th century and early 20th century in terms of the industry of shipping, as well as, the major industries that relied on shipping.

And then we move into safeguard and support.

When the federal government began to get involved in the 19th century through into the 20th century.

So lighthouses, lifesaving, all of those aspects of how the federal government finally realized that these Great Lakes are important to our national development.

And then we end with shipwrecks and survival.

And that really is kind of the human drama.

Man versus nature.

And they give you a sense of the majesty of Great Lakes history over that 350 year period.

(gentle music) - Well I think it's important to have these lighthouses so that you can visit them and realize, or come to realize, that there's been a lot of very, very hard and difficult, and dangerous work that's gone before to get to this point.

(gentle music) You know, navigation is so much easier now.

In the old days it certainly was not.

Many ships were lost.

Like on ships now, they don't even have charts.

Everything is strictly satellite navigation.

Nobody has a sexton aboard, you can't shoot a star to find out where you are.

(gentle music) In terms of actual navigation, there is not much to do.

So we might as well remind ourselves of how it used to be.

And take care of it, maybe learn from it.

(chuckling) (gentle music) - When the Coast Guard took over all lighthouses in 1939, they came and inspected it.

And I think they just decided, "Well, let's just leave things as they are."

So they didn't do anything to it until 1952.

You know which by that time, there weren't many of these lights left at all.

Our lighthouse is the last remaining free-standing wooden pier light on Lake Erie.

And it's one of only four left on the Great Lakes.

To us from a historical standpoint, it's not just this cute little thing.

It's very historically significant.

One of the most-asked questions we get is, "How much of the lighthouse is original?"

"Like how much of that wood were you able to preserve?"

You go inside and you walk into it.

And all of that wood on the interior in there is original.

The best answer I could give is about 60%.

So the restoration process, they took the top part... It's sometimes called a cupula.

They took that off the top and separated it from the lower part, or the tower.

And they put them in separate buildings and then restored them.

The lighthouse had been sitting next to the river for 60 years.

And the river would come up and go over the banks and flood.

There was a lot of rotten wood.

Basically the whole bottom part of it, it was just all rotted out.

Layers of old paint had to be stripped down to bare wood.

And then painted over again.

When you got down underneath all the paint, there was fire damage.

So at some point somebody had dropped a lantern, or something, and started a fire.

Luckily, which didn't burn down the whole thing.

We restored it and we brought it to the spot where it is now.

It was a 30 mile-an-hour wind that morning.

And the barge captain said, "I just can't guarantee that I'm going to get it there safely if we don't go now."

I was standing here by the pier.

A few minutes later I see the bridge opening and here comes the lighthouse through the bridge.

This half-an-hour trip took 10 minutes.

Well people were already starting to drift over at 9:30.

We had 500 people easily here.

Which is like, you know, the population of Port Clinton is 5,000.

They lifted it off the barge, put it down on the piers in that 30 mile-per-hour wind, and eased it down just pretty as a picture.

And so this big cheer went up from the crowd.

(crowd cheering) And it was just... It was just... It was ... It was... (clearing throat) I'm getting emotional now.

It was emotional for me.

(gentle music) You know, we have a tremendous amount of support now.

But back then, we had to raise all that money from scratch.

We had to fight with the city.

We had to win over the public.

We were just still building support.

- In the early 1900s, they built some breakwaters out in the harbor.

And that's when the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light went into operation in 1925.

Part of the money that was allocated for building that lighthouse was to tear this tower down.

And what happened was everybody in the community got together and said, "No, you can't tear our lighthouse down."

And they sent letters to Washington.

So the federal government agreed not to tear the tower down.

That eventually lead to the formation of the Fairport Harbor Historical Society.

And this building became a museum in 1945.

(bright music) - This lighthouse was going to be destroyed because they wanted to just put a tower with a blinking light on it.

So in 1996, a bunch of concerned citizens formed the Marblehead Lighthouse Historical Society and started doing fundraisers.

They saved the lighthouse.

And it's all because 11 citizens (chuckling) were smart enough to know how important this was.

And it was, it still is.

And it will be for another 100 years.

(bright music) - What put this lighthouse out of commission was the range light.

This lighthouse was supposed to be torn down in 1965.

A bunch of concerned citizens got together.

Saved the lighthouse and bought it for $1.

It takes quite a bit to keep this lighthouse going.

And what we can save by somebody donating that helps us to do something else.

(bright music) (gulls crying) - [Lynda] The day the lighthouse was officially dedicated and lit, was probably the proudest moment for all of us who had served on the committee.

(group applauding) And all of the people in Vermilion who had helped.

There were three, or 400, people down here for the official lighting.

And it was a very special event.

And that will be in our hearts forever.

(bright music) I've worked on the lighthouse committee.

We had things going all the time.

There was always... We were always selling something.

It was wine glasses or T-shirts, or books, or all sorts of things.

And there were events that we sponsored that helped raise the money.

And there were volunteers at all those things.

(bright music) - [Richard] We have the need, of course, to do fundraising.

We're all volunteer.

There's upkeep that has to be done.

Not just on the lighthouse itself, but on the grounds.

We have found that when people come to visit... And people come to visit from all over the country.

When they come here, they're going to be expecting to buy postcards and souvenirs.

And so we are using a replica of the 1902 boathouse as a combination museum/gift shop.

So we do have some original artifacts from the original boathouse.

And our highest sale item this year was the lighthouse passport book.

- So the U.S.

Lighthouse Society is an organization that provides a passport for lighthouses all over the country.

You order a passport, very similar to a real passport.

But it has spaces for stamps in it.

Every time you go to a lighthouse that is enrolled in the program, you can get a stamp in your passport for that lighthouse.

We participate in the program here at Fairport Harbor West Lighthouse.

So people who come, we do have a stamp for them.

I have always loved historic buildings.

I think because they're so unique from what we have today.

Once I heard that the federal government was auctioning off lighthouses, I looked into the program.

They put out a list.

It's about five to 15 lighthouses that they're going to focus on disposing of that year.

I started looking at them in terms of finding a summer home.

I love historic renovation.

Clearly lighthouse were going to be on the water.

Lots of history, lots of stories.

There are not a lot of funds available for historic restoration, number one.

Lighthouses specifically, number two.

And the few funds that are out there, you have to be a 501(c)3 non-profit organization to qualify.

So I self-funded the restoration.

(gentle music) This particular lighthouse was very special, however.

One, because it was located in a state park.

The other thing that really attracted me to this one was its size.

If you're going to put this much investment, time and money in, you might as well do it to something you can use for many different purposes.

It's difficult.

Many of them are in very remote locations.

Even in my case, one of the main difficulties was getting supplies, getting craftsmen.

You have to keep finding people who are as passionate about saving these buildings as you are to do the work.

In the early days we carried everything.

Nowadays, it's a little easier because all the big things are finished.

I do have to hire a large barge to bring all of the big things... Cabinets, appliances, granite countertops.

But I still have to walk the trash in, the recycles, and get some food out here.

And it is a half-a-mile walk, so it's a challenge.

When I got this lighthouse in 2011, it was basically stripped.

There's only a few original things that are here.

And mostly because they were too large, or too heavy, to carry out.

The tile quarry floor on the main living level.

The hardwood floor on the upper level.

The cast iron staircase, which is classic lighthouse.

As well as the original fog horn, which is now a side table.

If you look around the lighthouse, the engineering of this building is absolutely incredible.

It was built in a factory in Buffalo, New York.

It was brought down Lake Erie on a ship.

Somehow they were able to lift it up and set it on the platform, and they finished it in place.

That happened in 1922-23.

And then the light was first lit in 1925.

2025 will be the 100th anniversary of when the light was lit here at Fairport Harbor West Lighthouse.

One of the things I did very early on was I established an open house to celebrate the lighthouse's birthday, which is June 9th.

It just been an amazing experience to be able to work on something like this that you love, but then give it back to people who love it just as much.

- I did not believe that we would get this far.

Because when we opened that door, this place was a total disaster.

We shook our head and said, "hmmm, I don't know."

But we took it on.

It took us 20 years to get our act together to maintain this lighthouse.

And when we took it over, it was a mess.

We stripped the walls in the lighthouse, removed all the plaster.

We took 800 buckets of plaster out of here.

We sandblasted it down to the bare metal, primered it and painted it.

Each one of the shutters weigh 125 pounds apiece.

We had them all made.

And then we had to take off all the old shutters and put the new ones on.

The volunteers did that.

That was part of it.

We're to the point now where it's like your own home.

Now it's just maintaining it and keeping it up.

There's a lot of history in Lorain and its being lost.

And nowadays, it's not being taught in school like it used to be.

I feel sad for the kids coming up.

They don't realize... a potbelly stove that we have.

"What's that?"

We tell 'em.

You know, what it's used for.

We want to preserve history and that's what it's about.

Preserving the history.

All in a nutshell.

- One of our basic tenets is that we preserve the history of the Great Lakes and Fairport Harbor.

In 1945, this building became the Fairport Harbor Marine Museum.

And it was the first time that a museum was created on a lighthouse reservation.

So you hear all these programs now of saving the lighthouse.

Well the first one started right here in Fairport.

And ever since, the operations have been handled by volunteers.

In the Great Lakes Room, we have a lot of things about different types of commerce on the Great Lakes.

We have the pilot house from the steamer Frontenac.

It was a Cleveland Cliffs boat built in 1923.

It shows you what the pilot house in the 1920s wouldve looked like on a lake freighter.

Our Lyle gun is one of our most important artifacts.

And it's in the Founders Room.

It's the only gun that I know of that was not designed to kill things.

It was designed to save lives.

The Founders Room has things that had to do with the Coast Guard.

It also has things that have to do with, for example, the Battle of Lake Erie.

And it has things that have to do with the Underground Railroad.

The Fairport Room, number one, has our lens in there.

Around the different walls in the Fairport Room we have a lot of stuff that has to do with Fairport Harbor.

And Joseph Babcock was the lighthouse keeper in 1871.

(eerie music) He had a son named Robby.

And Robby Babcock actually had smallpox.

And he died in this building.

(gulls crying) After he died, his mother was Mary Babcock.

Joseph Babcock thought it would be good to get her some cats.

And there is one gray cat that is her favorite.

(cat meowing) And when she died, that cat disappeared.

When Pam Brent was the curator here, she lived upstairs.

And she told a story about seeing a ghost cat walking down the hallway, (cat purring) jumping on her bed and all that kind of stuff.

In 2000, about 2001, we were putting air conditioning in this building.

And the workers who were putting in the air conditioning, looked over and saw this mummified cat.

And the volunteers were talking about it the next week.

They said, "Hey, check out the ghost cat, it's down there."

Then the next thing that happens, we get an email from "The Plain Dealer."

They want to come down and do a story on the ghost cat.

And then Fox News Channel 8 comes down.

They do a story on the ghost cat.

But eventually he had about six different cable shows that he appeared in.

Many people come just to see the ghost cat.

We have all kinds of historical artifacts in here.

They want to see Sentinel, the ghost cat.

And we've had many paranormal groups that have come here and they set up all their things.

And they record what they hear, and they have some pictures and so forth.

And when I was talking with them, they said, "Well, you know, we found quite a few ghosts here."

Frequently when you're here and you might be the only one here, you do hear different noises.

And you're not sure where they come from.

Who knows?

(laughing) (bright music) - I mean we had paranormals out here.

And during that time I was out here, I had some questions.

I didn't believe in it until we was downstairs by the bathroom, and they said, "Put that flashlight on the back of that toilet.

Turn it off.” I set it on back of the toilet.

They said, "Start asking some questions."

So I says, uh, "Do you like what's going on here?"

The flashlight came on.

(mysterious music) Uh-huh, okay.

I says, uh, "Do you mind the tours?

People coming in and out?"

The light came on again.

It was around about, oh, two o'clock, maybe three o'clock in the morning.

We were standing here, we was talking.

I was looking in the kitchen.

In fact, I was standing right here.

(eerie music) As God as my witness, a shadow came out of the bedroom, walked over to the kitchen sink.

I said, "That's it."

I went down the steps and I stayed outside.

I said, "No more, that's it."

I believe in it.

(mysterious music) - So back when the lighthouse was automated, in 1966, they had a mannequin with a Coast Guard uniform on it.

And put in one of the windows.

The theory was to make it look like it was still occupied.

Some places say it was originally a male mannequin.

And some places say there was originally two.

Well I ain't... I tell you, I know for sure that there was one, and it was a female mannequin.

(laughing) They left that there and it was called, "Sarah the Lighthouse Phantom," became its moniker.

People that would go by there would look and say, "Hey look, there's something up there."

It ended up being Sarah, the lighthouse ghost.

And the lighthouse was haunted and all this kind of stuff.

I can't remember what year it was.

But somebody knocked out one of the windows and got into the lighthouse.

They went up and the did some damage up in the lens.

The Coast Guard came in and took Sarah because they wanted to keep it.

Because they had a tradition that whenever anybody came out there for the first time, they signed their name and the date on Sarah's shirt.

So the shirt Sarah had all the names of these people and stuff, so they wanted to keep it.

So they took all of that.

And what we've done in the meantime, is we got a stick figure up there with an Air Force uniform on it.

(chuckling) But we've since acquired a female mannequin.

And one of the Coast Guard people that belonged to the lighthouse donated his uniform.

So once we get it restored, Sarah's going to be back there in the window.

(chuckling) (gentle music) - One of things that people often want to know is, is the lighthouse haunted?

And I say, "No, I have not noticed that this lighthouse is haunted."

But what do I know?

(chuckling) You know, there's been highs of highs, and lows of lows.

But the unique thing about this lighthouse is that it has personality, it has character.

And it's been here for 100 years.

And hopefully it will be here for much longer than that.

I'm just a steward.

- We don't own it, the public owns this lighthouse.

We're maintaining for 'em.

It's their money involved in it.

(gentle music) This isn't my house, it's your house.

We're just here, the keepers.

That's all we are.

We'll go through the house and see what's got to be done, what's planned for next year.

Other than just leaving it go.

Maintaining it.

- [Richard] So that's our obligation, we owe it to the public.

Really it is, to me, it's their lighthouse, it's not ours.

We're just sort of the keepers of it.

It's our duty to maintain it so they can be part of it.

(gentle music) - [John] The main thing is just to preserve the tower and the keeper's house.

(gentle music) My favorite part of being a volunteer here, at the lighthouse, is passing on the stories to all the people that visit.

It just makes me feel good to tell the story of Fairport Harbor, the Great Lakes, and sailing on the Great Lakes.

(gulls crying) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Richard] Once the lighthouse got out here, and especially once we really started to fix it up, this has become a showcase.

(gentle music) - [Lynda] On a warm summer day, it's almost impossible to find a parking place within two blocks.

And we're very fortunate to have this in our community.

- [Justin] Great Lakes in North America account for 20% of the earth's fresh water.

We want to drink it, we want to play in it.

We want to swim and fish in it.

So it needs our protection.

- [Sheila] There are two kinds of people who come.

First kind is local people.

They want to see the lighthouse, they're coming to the beach.

The second kind of people, they are hardcore lighthouse lovers.

(gentle music) (peaceful music)