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Split Rock Lighthouse 1905 storm demonstrated need for North Shore light
By Jimmy Lovrien jlovrien@duluthnews.com
It started with a November gale. On Nov. 28, 1905, winds gusted at 70 mph over Lake Superior. Mammoth waves pounded the shore.
In Duluth, the freighter Mataafa tried entering the harbor through the canal, but the waves tossed against the piers. Onlookers watched helplessly from Canal Park as it broke in two and nine of its crew members died.
Ships ran aground all along the North Shore.
By the time the storm passed, 29 ships had been damaged or destroyed and 33 people were dead. Many of the ships were owned by the U.S. Steel Corp.
In the storm’s aftermath, the company began lobbying for a lighthouse on the North Shore, but officials couldn’t decide where. Eventually, they settled on the cliffs north of the Split Rock River. From there, ships could be warned of reefs near the mouths of the nearby Split Rock and Gooseberry rivers.
But without roads, construction of the lighthouse proved difficult.
“There is not even a rabbit path leading to the point from the land side, and the whole of the 600 tons of materials had to be landed from a boat at times when the sea was calm and hoisted by a derrick to the top of the rock on which the lighthouse will stand,” the News Tribune wrote of construction.
Split Rock Lighthouse began guiding ships when it was commissioned in 1910, and as soon as a road was built along the North Shore in 1924, it started to serve another function as a tourist attraction.
Eventually, advancing navigation technology made the lighthouse obsolete, and the U.S. Coast Guard decommissioned Split Rock in 1968. The state of Minnesota took over the property in 1971, and the Minnesota Historical Society has managed the site since 1976.
Today, it remains a popular tourist destination, and the Minnesota Historical Society has restored it to its 1920s condition.
Although the light is no longer needed to guide ships, it still lights up every Nov. 10 to honor the 29 crew members who died when the Edmund Fitzgerald freighter was lost in a November 1975 gale. u
