The Morning Tribune of Jcarried the following about Margaret Norvell. I just happen to keep a bigger light than most women because I have got to see that so many men get safely home.” She said, “There isn’t anything unusual in a woman keeping a light in her window to guide men folks home. The sailors at sea became the men in Margaret’s life. Margaret’s husband drowned in 1891, while serving as keeper of Head of Passes Lighthouse, and, with two small children two support, Margaret was appointed in his place. The middle keeper of this trio was Margaret R. Beginning in 1882, a string of three women keepers served at Port Pontchartrain Lighthouse, and their tenure lasted until the light was discontinued in 1929. Just two years after the tower was extended, another change came to the station. Additional brickwork flared out the top of the tower, raising its height by seven feet and giving it a unique dumbbell appearance. In 1880, the diameter of the top of the tower was increased to support a new lantern room. A new dwelling, kitchen, 3,000-gallon cistern, and a plank walk were built in 1871. The old frame dwelling rested on piles that were very rotten, and it was thought another storm of the same magnitude would sweep it away with its occupants. Before the war was over, the old abandoned octagonal tower described as “a weather-boarded, eight-sided truncated pyramid of very ugly shape” was dismantled and used to build a walkway over the lake to the railroad pier.Ī hurricane in September 1869 carried away the station’s kitchen, capsized the cistern, and destroyed the plank walk leading from the dwelling to the railroad wharf. Port Pontchartrain Lighthouse was reportedly the only one on the Gulf Coast to retain its keeper throughout the Civil War. The lighthouse was completed in 1855 and equipped with a fifth-order Fresnel lens. ![]() Square dwellings perched just offshore on pilings and topped by a circular lantern room were built at the other two ports, but for some reason, Port Pontchartrain received a brick tower constructed 2,100 feet from shore on a concrete pad supported by pilings driven into the lake bottom. Danville Leadbetter, the lighthouse inspector for the Gulf of Mexico, wrote in 1853 that the three towers were “wholly worthless” and were being repaired “only in the hope of making them serve till new ones can be built.”Ĭongress appropriated $6,000 on Augfor a new lighthouse at Port Pontchartrain to replace the old lighthouse that was beyond repair. ![]() According to oral history passed down through his family, Keeper Shane died the following year after tripping over a bucket and falling down the lighthouse stairs.īy the early 1850s, the three octagonal lighthouses marking the ports along the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain were in need of replacement. Shane became the lighthouse’s first keeper on February 15, 1839. Ten lamps and fourteen-inch reflectors were affixed to the chandelier.īenjamin J. From its base with a diameter of eighteen feet, the tower rose to a height of twenty-eight feet where a revolving chandelier created a flashing light, distinguishing it from the fixed lights at the two nearby ports. Three years later, a larger sum was earmarked for a lighthouse, and this time an octagonal wooden tower, similar to those constructed nearby at Bayou St. In 1834, Congress allocated $5,000 for the construction of a light with a height of eighteen feet, but the railroad company preferred the higher focal plane of their light and suggested the government just take it over. A crude light, consisting of a square lantern raised between two poles to a height of fifty feet, was erected by the railroad company to serve as the port’s first navigational aid. Port Pontchartrain, the lake’s first artificial harbor, was also constructed at Milneburg and offered connections to the health resorts located on the lake’s northern shore. During the heat of the summer, residents of New Orleans could board the steam train nicknamed Smokey Mary and soon be cooling themselves in the lake. To attract visitors to Milneburg, a railroad was built connecting the town to the French Quarter. Photograph courtesy Center for Louisiana Studies Port Pontchartrain with both the 18 towers. Little remains of this once popular resort town save Milneburg Lighthouse, which is now better known as Port Pontchartrain Lighthouse. ![]() ![]() On a section of his land, bordering the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, he established the settlement of Milneburg. Alexander eventually settled in New Orleans, where he became a successful businessman and purchased large tracts of land. When he was ordered to cut his hair and wear the standard powdered wig of the time, he decided to head for the Land of the Free. Redheaded Alexander Milne was born in Scotland where in his youth he was employed as a gardener at Gordon Castle.
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