Two Lighthouses Still Watch Over Erie's Shore and Shipping
The Presque Isle Light and the little waterworks lighthouse on the bay side bookend more than a century of guiding ships into Erie harbor.
Erie's harbor was valuable enough to need guarding twice over. The Presque Isle Light, first lit in 1873 on the northern shore of the peninsula, still flashes its warning over Lake Erie — a 74-foot tower with its red-brick keeper's house, now open for tours in season. It is the image most visitors carry home from the park.
A smaller sibling stands on the bay side: the miniature lighthouse built in 1906 by the Erie Waterworks near the old waterworks on the peninsula's southeast shore, by the ferry landing along the multi-purpose trail. Together with the Erie Harbor North Pier Light at the channel entrance, the lights map the whole route a ship travels from open lake to protected bay.
The lights belong to a working system — the Coast Guard station that began as a life-saving station on Presque Isle in 1876 still operates today — but their meaning for residents is simpler. They are the punctuation marks of the shoreline, visible from the beaches, the trail and the bayfront, tying the recreational peninsula to the commercial harbor it shelters.
November is a fitting month to appreciate them: as the shipping season winds down and lake weather turns, the lights go back to their original job description, standing out against early dark and rough water on Pennsylvania's only Great Lakes shore.
There is a third light in the set, the Erie Land Light at the foot of Lighthouse Street on the city's east side, first built in 1818 and replaced in 1867 — a reminder that Erie's lights were layered as the harbor grew. Together the three make a small, complete curriculum in how a lake port learned to bring its ships home, and they are all still standing where a resident can visit them in a single afternoon.
