The Lightkeeper's Log: Fire on 19th-Century Isle Royale

Isle Royale Lighthouse in 1963. National Visual Inventory Cards 60-196 / S. Viers.

The lighthouse

The Isle Royale Lighthouse, also called Menagerie Island Lighthouse, stands 61 feet tall on Menagerie Island, a long, rocky island south of Malone Bay. It began operating in 1875 to guide ships around the shoals and reefs of Isle Royale's south shore, serving the traffic of the island's mining booms and busts. It was automated in 1913, and is now vacant and on the National Register of Historic Places.

John H. Malone

In August 1878, John H. Malone became keeper. Life on the barren rock was hardly luxurious, but it suited him and his wife: they stayed thirty-two years and raised twelve children there. Malone faithfully kept a logbook of weather, waves, upkeep and lamp lightings — and of family life and events, such as the wreck of the Algoma: on May 19, 1886, he noted "lifejackets, pillos (sic), parts of a piano" washing ashore.

One spring's journey out to the station, in his words: he left Duluth on April 22 by steamer, sheltered at Two Harbors from a nor'easter, waited at Grand Marais through 4 inches of snow, reached Washington Harbor at 8:20 AM on the 26th, then went by tug to Tobin's Harbor — where he had to buy a boat, the water being too low to launch the lighthouse boat — and waited out 6 inches of snow and a gale before reaching the station on April 30. The water had dropped 14 inches; "we got our provisions and selves all wet." He found the station dry and in good shape, and "lighted the lamp."

Research and historical records give insight into Isle Royale's fire history. NPS.

Fire on the island

Little is known about Isle Royale's fires before it became a national park in 1940 and official records began. Malone's log offers a rare window, and research backs it up: sediment cores hold layers of charcoal from fires in the island's post-settlement era.

Why so many fires? Their causes and extent are unknown, but they may be linked to mining: a common way to find copper was to burn the forest off to expose the rock.

Between 1879 and 1893, Malone recorded nine fires, among them:

Other entries record a "Large fire on Isle Royale," a "Big fire on Isle Royale" (both with no location), a "Fire at Washington Harbor" and "a very large fire on Isle Royale."

Sources

Based on "From the Lightkeeper's Log: Isle Royale Fire History," Isle Royale National Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A color photograph of the lighthouse credited to an individual is not reproduced.