Wisconsin Lights - Sherwood Point

Sherwood Point Lighthouse. 9/14/2019 dwm photo

Sherwood Point was the last manned lighthouse on the Great Lakes.  It wasn't automated until 1983.

It's history started with the effort to create a canal across the Door County peninsula so ships could cut miles to and from Green Bay and avoid the treacherous Devil's Door passage.

The light is on a bluff (see map lower left), high enough that we didn't see water from the road.

The lantern was home to a 4th Order
Fresnel Lens during most of its
life. 9/14/19 (dwm)

The land is named for Peter Sherwood, who settled the land in 1836.  Interest in using the property for a light began in the 1870s, but it didn't start operating until the fall of 1883.

The most unusual piece of history associated with this light, that I've not read about anywhere else, is that it was home to a radio station.  When electricity and running water were brought to Sherwood Point in the 1930s, a broadcast station was too.  WWOC broadcast a weather report twice a day.

Sherwood Point - to the left is Green Bay, Sturgeon
Bay to the right.  (Google Map image)

Sherwood Point remains a Coast Guard Station, with no public access except one weekend a year during the annual Lighthouse Festival.  It's at the end of the road, with a neighbor across the street.  I was able to park near its driveway for these photos.

Like the Rawley Point light, this one is used by members of U.S. Coast Guard as a vacation home.

See more lighthouses by following this link.