Michigan City Lighthouse

This was the first Lighthouse in Michigan City, and is were the lightkeeper stayed!

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS:

This Solitary beacon here along Indiana's meager 45 mile sandy stretch of Lake Michigan Shoreline has flashed for 161 years.

It was first fueled by whale oil and operated by colorful characters, but now it's run by Coast Guard computers that require virtually no human involvement.

Where it once served to keep three-masted schooners from slamming into the rocky sandbars, the powerful beam now mostly warns drunken pleasure boaters away from the concrete breakwater.

Amazingly, sometimes people still hit it.

The 16 members of Indiana's Coast Guard Station here in Washington Park Marina change the four halogen bulbs in the computer-operated lighthouse every once in a while, maintain the computer-operated fog horn, arrest drunks, pull drowning victims from the cold water and assist boaters during the busy summer months.

Indiana's sole contribution to American lighthouse history began in 1837, when the U.S. government built a 40-foot white tower with a lantern on top. Edmund B. Harrison, the first Hoosier lightkeeper, earned $350 a month plus 200 lbs. of pork, 100 pounds of beef, 10 gallons of beans, and two barrels of potatoes.

In 1858, a new lighthouse was built, and in 1861, Miss Harriet E. Colfax, a piano and voice teacher, and more importantly, a cousin of Congressman Schuyler Colfax, was appointed keeper of the Hoosier beacon.

The Legendary Miss Colfax served 43 years, climbing atop the two-story house twice a night to trim the wick, wipe grime from the reflectors and recharge the light with oil.

Twice a night, she also trudged out to another light at the end of a wooden pier extending 1,500 feet into the treacherous lake. On many a winter night, Miss Colfax was nearly blown off the icy pier by gale-force winds.

Grateful shop captains who relied on Miss Colfax's diligence in keeping the harbor light burning referred to the lighthouse as "Old Faithful."

Miss Colfax dutifully recorded harbor life in her diary.

"The waves dashing over both piers, very nearly carrying me with them into the lake," she wrote in 1872.

Death was a common theme, "fearful loss of life" a common phrase in her diary. Ships routinely hurtled into the shifting sandbars and sank, drowning everyone aboard; their bodies sometimes washed up in her vegetable garden.

Miss Colfax lived in the lighthouse with her longtime companion, Miss Ann C. Hartwell, a schoolteacher. Miss Colfax retired from lighthouse duty in 1904. She died a year later, one month after the death of her dear friend.

Things have changed considerably since Miss Colfax's day. The lighthouse where she lived and worked for 43 years is now a museum, although none of her former possessions are in it. About 4,500 people visit the museum each year.