Stannard Rock Light: One of Americas Greatest Engineering Feats 

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I've heard many Minnesotans say, when they see an ocean for a first time, "It looks like Lake Superior!" So yes, it's huge!

Lighthouses seem boring on the surface, but these structures really represent some of the toughest buildings built in the most inhospitable spots, crowned with glorious examples of the optical technology of the day.

I’m a Michigan native. I love seeing things about Michigan here. You should do one on the whitefish point lighthouse. Connections with the civil war and WW1

The lake is so large it creates its own weather

Another Michigan native and I live in upper Michigan. It’s hard to quantify the size of the lakes other then saying they are inland seas. You cannot see across them and behave much more like oceans then one would initially believe. Tides, weather, waves that can top 25ft or more during storms. You can surf in a lot of places along the Great Lakes. There are thousands of shipwrecks recorded in the Great Lakes.

Most of the lighthouses that were sold off are actually still in use as navigation aids, as boats are not expected to rely solely on their own systems. Things can go wrong, and if their computer equipment isn't working they need to be able to fall back on traditional methods. It was in fact a condition of the sale of these lighthouses that the new owners keep them maintained. Being automated and electrified they no longer require constant tending, but they do need just a little looking after.

Thanks for highlighting Standard Rock! A few facts that weren't mentioned: One of the most impressive parts of the stone light tower is that it's built of large limestone blocks which are tied together with large iron bolts, which are set in pure Portland cement. Because of the bonding strength of the pure Portland, the tower is considered a monolith of stone. A typical stay at Stannard Rock would be 3 weeks on, and then one week of shore leave, if the boat could get out on schedule. Most keepers at the rock didn't stay long. Louis Wilks had the longest service at Stannard Rock which lasted 20 years. He also had the longest continuous stay on the rock at 99 days, mostly due to bad weather which delayed the boat coming to take him off. Along with the rough water, Ice was one of the biggest threats to keepers staying in the light. Some years the light couldn't be opened until June because of the feet of ice built up over the tower from the winter months of freezing spray. The worst freeze up happened in November 1913 when Keepers became trapped as the base of the tower, which was covered by 13 feet of ice when the freezing weather hit. When the Lighthouse Board made it out to the light to take the men off for the winter, it took them a week to break through the ice with steam hoses and picks.

Thanks for doing a video on this lighthouse! I'm a Michigan native and I enjoy Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Another extreme lighthouse would be St.George's Reef light in Northern California.

Another interesting topic in the upper great lakes region is the elf stations. One in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and one in Wisconsin. They would use extremely low frequencies to send messages to submarines during the cold war.

3:25 - Chapter 1 - Early attempts 6:05 - Chapter 2 - Construction 10:25 - Chapter 3 - Life in stannard rock light 13:15 - Chapter 4 - The end of an era 15:30 - Chapter 5 - Wrap up

Hey Simon! I'm a huge fan, an Upper Michigan native, and this was so interesting. Standard rock is such a fascinating piece of engineering and history. You should do a video on the history of the copper mining in the keewenaw peninsula. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Cheers, Simon!

Only recently discovered your selection of channels recently and already I'm hooked. Some really interesting and informative topics!

It's not as epic a feat as this one in terms of construction but I'd love to see a video on cape hatteras lighthouse, it's the tallest brick lighthouse in the US and had to be moved almost 3000 feet away from the shore. Its my favorite lighthouse, very beautiful construction

It’s beautiful up there. My late mother loved lighthouses, and we spent many a Michigan summer including them in our adventures-yet I still haven’t seen all of the ones in Michigan. It’s on my bucket list for my mom’s sake, because she didn’t get to see them all, either.

Fantastic episode! I only heard of Stannard Rock Lighthouse because of its minor plot importance in Jon Bois' epic college football speculative fiction project 20020, so it was really great to experience a deep dive on its history.

Now I want a sequel to Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse but here. The claustrophobia turned up to 11

I used to live near Saint George Reef Light house in northern California. its built on a reef that sunk a steam paddle wheel boat the same week Oregon became a state. Always cool to hear about the really crazy light houses America built.

Thank you so much for doing this one! I requested it a little while ago, but I didn't expect it to amount to anything. Awesome to see!!

I'm a lighthouse geek! I've been a radio operator at 2 of them, and never met one I didn't like. If you're looking a lighthouse with a really amazing history attached to it, ( they're all amazing, in their own ways ) check out Cape Florida Light, just hollering distance from the south end of Key Biscayne Fla., near Miami. I can guarantee you will not be disappointed!

Superior is the largest lake by surface area if you exclude the Caspian Sea(which is a lake), but Lake Baikal is larger by volume

These videos makes our days better

I can't imagine enduring a November gale out there. Feeling the structure rock and be beat upon for days. It took a special breed of person.

Could you pretty please please please do something on one of your channels about Orlando Metcalfe Poe?? He's my favourite lighthouse architect. His life was, pretty awesome, and he's documented sufficiently. Everything from his roles in the civil war to how he ended up as a lighthouse architect. A lot of his lighthouses stand to this day. A lot of his civil war era structures, including forts, are preserved here and there in various national and state parks.

Great episode. Perhaps you could do a list episode featuring extreme light houses or ones of historic significance. Bell rock light house is a good one.

I've actually been fishing at Stannard Rock and seen the lighthouse there. It would truly be a lonely place to live. Thanks for sharing about this little known, but important part of the history of Lake Superior.

I love the idea of a series of lighthouses. You should consider doing a video on the Tillamook Rock lighthouse off the coast of Oregon. Locally known as “Terrible Tilly”, it was built on an island and was subject to immense storms and hardships during construction. A lot of really interesting history there.

More lighthouses! Love this Simon :D

Please do a video on the Fasnet Light house in Ireland.

Check the story of Minot's Ledge lighthouse. Amazing technique back then.

Neat stuff. Never even heard of this place before. Thanks Simon!

Love seeing you cover topic related to Michigan. Keep up the good work

If that preservation group wants to save this place, they better figure out some type of ferry tour for public access. You run into this dealing with environmental groups often - they want to buy or improve something, then ban you from even seeing it. This would be a huge hit today in the age of selfies and drone photography.

I adore lighthouses❤

Thank you for teaching me something about American history which I had no idea even existed. Thumbs up.

A video about St. George Reef Light would be pretty cool.

JAS 39 GRIPEN! Please Simon, i have been asking for this so long

thanks for posting! From Michigan

Stannard Rock, Tillamook Rock, and the Saint George Reef all have well deserved and fearsome reputations.

Very interesting. Hope it gets restored.

As always Simon, great job

Thank you for this video, I am a Michigander and take pride in my state and our great lakes!

Finally, a Gitche Gumee story that doesn't mention the Edmund Fitzgerald even once. I'm not knocking the Fitzgerald. I'm just pointing out how disproportionate the amount of programming about it is by comparison to other topics owing to the same lake.

In the summer there's daily fishing charters to the light many record lake trout have been caught near the light

Stannard Rock Light House Bed and Breakfast, I can see the Tee-shirts now, "I survived the Rock" :-) !!!

You’ve mentioned it many times on this channel, but is it possible to do a video on DARPA? I’m guessing it would all be classified information but it would be really cool. If not the United States interstate system?

@Megaprojects If you want to do a lighthouse then the logical one should be the Eddystone which predated this by 180 years and was the worlds first open sea lighthouse. Or you could do a biographics on the Stevensons and Smith who are without doubt the greatest family of lighthouse builds there has been

I have lived my entire life in Michigan. Im a history NUT. I read stories of my ancestors traveling. (weve been here in Michigan since the 1835) it took a week to travel from Grand Rapids to Cadillac (can do it in 1 1/2 hours now). and that was with "roads". you get into the UP (upper peninsula) and that time was doubled. to GET TO some of these land base light houses took many weeks. quicker by boat. You had to be the essence of a loaner and self sufficient. though there were cases where wife and children went with the light keeper to these "edge of the world" type places.

You should do a video on cape Hatteras lighthouse and how the moved it!

Biltmore Mansion deserves an episode as it was DRFINITELY a MegaProject as it required its own railroad spur and blacksmith and brick masonry shop JUST to START construction

And if that were attempted today, it would be years behind schedule and millions over budget.

You can take a charter fishing trip out to Stannard Rock for epic lake trout fishing.

When your Light House mate begins to repeat "RedRum," you know its time to leave!

You could do the new capital city been built in egypt on your next video

There's a lighthouse off the coast of Crescent City California that I've flown over several times. I have a photo or two. How it was supplied and manned still makes me wonder.

Excellent!

Love this very clever. I was at first imagining some buider laying the first brick underwater 🤪

For a long time I thought it would be a cool job, being introverted. Then I watched "The Lighthouse" 😳

You'll have to check out the Eddystone Lighthouse in Cornwall. It took 4 attempts before a permanent structure was established there.

Sounds a bit like the Bell Rock lighthouse in the North Sea.

I caught a master angler lake trout at stannard rock, best fishing trip of my life!

Video starts at 1:44

I'm having the worst day. Had a seizure on the bus, lost my wallet and then when I get home from the ER, everything wrong in my life starts stabbing me in the dick (metaphorically) and it all seems to be my fault. I'm balling my eyes out and can't do anything about my problems because they're really out of my control. Thanks for doing this Simon and Co. I need to just lay down for twenty minutes and try to calm down. This seriously helps. Doesn't cure anything, but definitely lowers the stress level.

You should look at the construction of Split Rock Lighthouse!

On the album "Hope," the band Klaatu has a mini-opera based on a lighthouse keeper who is the lonliest creature in the universe.

They could of engineered a way to keep the interior warm and dry. Have the entrances be inclined with a right angle and a watertight door at the beginning and end of the entrance hall. Store oil and have an oil burning heater

The Point Saint George Light off of Northern California is another light house that was amazingly difficult to build and staff.

I gotta look into lighthouse keeping

I've been watching too much Brain Blaze. When Simon referred to the 'floating bell' (at 3:32), my mind when to a floating bell of a different kind.

You should do a video on the top ten engineering feats on America!!

I’m more impressed the U.S. Congress was full of a bunch of penny pinchers. Needed $20k, got $10k. Needed $300k, got only $50k to start! 🤯

I love light houses.

You've done some work to elevate your presentation skills. Thank you Simon. No more the bored arrogance of the landed gentry. I might even subscribe, after a few more 'verification' videos. Your subject matter would be a loss, as it was for me for years, I had clicked on the 'don't include in my feed' option. Then done a recent 'reset'

That was cool.

Interesting. Would like to see a video on my great, great, great uncle Sir James Douglass of Eddystone Lighthouse fame and his rivalry with John Smeaton....

Have you guys looked into the Washington national cathedral? Those are some massive stones

Next time do Minot's Ledge Lighthouse, which was built on a rock below the water most time in ridiculously rough conditions.

Great video

I would love to stay a summer there, with modern equipment (starlink/radios) but back in the day I would imagine it being lonely and boring.

I really hope they get the funding for restoration. The government should be paying for that.

Imagine your GPS failing for any reason at all, and your navigator tells you, "Sorry captain, they turned off the lighthouses last week. Said no one needs them anymore."

Suggestion the bell rock lighthouse

I really wish I would have had the chance to live there.

Lake superior can be a wild body of water i live on the north shore in canada

So a grand wouldn't pay for a boat with a bell, but 3 decades later, 10 grand paid for the building of that beacon? Sounds like someone in the government made a bonus.

The man that was going to start swimming to shore had me crying 😂😂

Michigan has a lot of lighthouses. Most are more assessable to the public than this one.

And th.ere are still some that say "the pyramids are impossible to build with modern technology!"..

Both the Eddystone and Bell Rock lighthouses in the UK are older and bigger. The Bell Rock is still the worlds oldest offshore lighthouse.

Enjoyed the video as I live in Michigan myself. But not a fan of having to watch a minute and a half long ad when I pay for RU-vid Premium so I dont have to watch ads.

Are you aware of Ripple Rock at Seymore Narrows, BC, the site of the largest non-nuclear explosion, used in an attempt to clear the channel? Interesting reading, if nothing else. Love your multi site programming.

It's the Alcatraz of light houses

Still waiting for my saviour, storms tear me limb from limb; my fingers feel like seaweed... I'm so far out I'm too far in. I am a lonely man... my solitude is true my eyes have borne stark witness and now my knights are numbered too. I've seen the smiles on dead hands-- the stars shine, but they're not for me. I prophesy disaster and then I count the cost... I shine but, shining, dying, I know that I am almost lost. On the table lies blank paper/my tower is built on stone/ I only have blunt scissors/I only have the bluntest home... I've been the witness, and the seal of death lingers in the molten wax that is my head. When you see the skeletons of sailing-ship spars sinking low You'll begin to wonder if the points of all the ancient myths are solemnly directed straight at you... No time now for contrition: the time for that's long past. The walls are thin as tissue and if I talk I'll crack the glass. So I only think on how it might have been, locked in silent monologue, in silent scream Anyway, I'm much too tired to speak and, as the waves crash on the bleak stones of the tower, I start to freak... ...and find that I am overcome... 'Unreal, unreal!' ghost helmsmen scream and fall in through the sky, not breaking through my seagull shrieks... no breaks until I die: the spectres scratch on window-slits-- hollowed faces, mindless grins only intent on destroying what they've lost. I craw the wall till steepness ends in the vertical fall; my pail has sailed into the sea: no joking hopes at dawn. White bone shine in the iron-jaw mask lost mastheads pierce the freezing dark and parallel my isolated tower... no paraffin for the flame no harbour left to gain 'Alone, alone,' the ghosts all call, pinpoint me in the light. The only life I feel at all is the presence of the night. Would you cry if I died? Would you cry if I died? Would you catch the final words of mine? Would you catch my words? I know that there's no time I know that there's no rhyme... false signs find me I don't want to hate, I just want to grow; why can't I let me live and be free?.but I die very slowly alone. I know no more ways, I am so afraid, myself won't let me just be myself and so I am completely alone... The maelstrom of my memory is a vampire and it feeds on me now, staggering madly, over the brink I fall. Lighthouses might house the key but can I reach the door? I want to walk on the sea so that I may better find ashore... but how can I ever keep my feet dry? I scan the horizon I must keep my eyes on all parts of me. Looking back on the years it seems that I have lost the way: Like a dog in the night, I have run to a manger ...now I am the stranger I stay in. All of the grief I have seen leaves me chasing solitary peace; but I hold experience in my head... I'm too close to the light I don't think I see right, for I blind me... WHERE is the God that guides my hand? HOW can the hands of others reach me? WHEN will I find what I grope for? WHO is going to teach me? I am me/me are we/we can't see any way out of here. Crashing sea/atrophied history: Chance has lost my Guinevere... I don't want to be one wave in the water But sea will drag me deep One more haggard DROWNED MAN... I can see the Lemmings coming, but I know I'm just a man; Do I join or do I founder? Which can is the best I may? Oceans drifting sideways, I am pulled into the spell; I feel you around me... I know you well. Stars slice horizons where the lines stand much too stark; I feel I am drowning... hands stretch in the dark. Camps of panoply and majesty, what is Freedom of Choice? Where do I stand in the pageantry... whose is my voice? It doesn't feel so very bad now: I think the end is the start. Begin to feel very glad now: ALL THINGS ARE A PART ALL THINGS ARE APART ALL THINGS ARE A PART.

Hey next PowerBar jackpot winner! You could have saving a national monument to your credit without even significantly denting your stash!!! It could be the "insert your name" lighthouse.

Any idea on how many labor hours were expended making this project happen? i imagine 450K plus. That would be an interesting stat to add to this already impressive project!

I am surprised that you implied that radio communication existed in the 19th century, when, in fact, it was not utilized, until 1900.

"it took a really long time to cut the stone to exact sizes" Ancient Egyptians- LOL!!!

I work at a foundry and we have a glass case showing things we’ve made over the last 140 years, that rot iron thing we helped make Apparently

With the way global warming is accelerating, it won't be long before the great lakes aren't referred to as "lakes" anymore at all, but rather as the north American strategic freshwater reserves. On a more positive (and freakin' WEIRD) note, I'd LOVE a House on The Rock in Wisconsin video!

Neat Lighthouse, it would be more impressive if there wasn't Roter Sand