The Racine Harbor Lighthouse and Life Saving Station is a complex of navigation aids begun by the U.S. government in the 1860s near the harbor of

Racine, Wisconsin Racine ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River. Racine is situated 22 miles (35 km) south of Milwaukee and approximately 60 ...

. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1975. With To guide ships into Racine's harbor, the federal government in 1837 built the first lighthouse at the mouth of the Root River, with a light on a tower and a lightkeeper's house. Those structures no longer exist. In the early 1860s the pier was extended, and a new lighthouse and keeper's quarters were begun on a rock-filled crib offshore. They were completed in 1866 and served for 40 years. In 1903 the light was moved from the old lighthouse to a free-standing 120-foot steel tower, and the tower of the old lighthouse was capped with a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

. The life-saving station was added in 1903, a 2-story building with a 3-story square, pyramidal-roofed lookout tower. Part of the station was a frame boathouse. A team from the Life-Saving Service lived in this station, and conducted search and rescue operations along the Milwaukee-Kenosha coast and out into Lake Michigan.

References

Buildings and structures in Racine, Wisconsin Lighthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin National Register of Historic Places in Racine County, Wisconsin {{Wisconsin-NRHP-stub

See also

References