Episode 90 - Green Island Lighthouse, Ohio

0:00 All right. Recording 85? 90. 90. I'm so far off. Well, that's because you're supposed to be 89 and I'm recording this early. Oh. Oh. I'll be ready. Hi, everybody. I'm Emily. And I'm Vince. And this is The Lighthouse Lowdown. So everybody knows, ouch, I'm recording podcasts early, you know, because we're getting married in December. Yep. Big, big event. It's currently October.

0:41 Yes. And I'm thinking before and after, I'm not going to be one, or I'm not going to really have time to focus on anything else, you know? Yes. Just going to put everything I have into this one day. So I'm recording our episodes early. Yep. Episode 80 today. 90. 90 today. Yep, we're wedding planning. We're getting married in December. Thank you to our listeners for still listening. Last night we talked with our DJ, a good friend of ours, about some music. Yeah, really good. We're going to be dancing the night away. It's going to be awesome. It's not going to be the stuff you normally hear at a wedding. It's going to be something. It's going to be a step up.

1:25 We should send him our intro song. Oh my gosh. I'd be like, I just turned so red with embarrassment. So I'm doing a series. I looked up Green Island, the one in Taiwan, right? I don't know anything about it. Taiwan is how you say it? Yeah, Taiwan. You're like, I don't know anything about it. I actually need help with something else. And realize that there are other Green Island lighthouses, like lots of other Green Island lighthouses. So I'm doing a Green Island series until they're all gone. Okay. It's like Snake Island. Exactly.

2:09 But there's several Snake Islands. Yeah. At least the ones that I'm covering are pretty well documented. So they're actually a little less stressful. Yeah. Nice. So how many did you find? Well, you're going to find out. Okay. They're just going to keep going until they're done. Okay, here we go. So the first one I'm covering today is the one in Ohio. We had a small conversation about Ohio right before this. But I'm going to do a history buoy first. I do have one. And I'm going to cover strontium. Strontium? Which is an element on the periodic table. I would not have guessed. It's how we got our lighthouse today. So I figured I would go ahead and cover it. Strontium. Yeah, we know the background of what brought us our lighthouse. I can't wait to learn. Yeah. It's element number 38, symbol SR, for those who know anything about the periodic table. What's the atomic mass? How dare you? I don't have it pulled up. Turd. I thought you would have. Originally called strontium before they, you know, like put it into the periodic table. And then they wanted to match all the alkaline earth metals with EM at the end. And, you know, a lot of them are EM at the end. Chemistry was very hard for me. Me too. Says the chemical engineer. I cheated my way through organic chemistry. Only at the end. What? I had to. And just so everyone knows,

3:44 these are entertainment purpose only. These are not real stories. Yeah, it's not real. Anyway, so originally called Strontian after the town in Scotland where it was first discovered in 1790, which the town wasn't called Strontian, but I think it was like Stronta or Stront, Stronts, something. Somewhere in Scotland. Yeah. Okay. It's soft, yellow, silver in color. and forms a dark oxide layer when exposed to air. So if it's in a vacuum, it's like, here, I have a picture. Just pretty yellow silver. Oh yeah, almost like gold. Pale, yeah, almost like gold, but definitely notes of silver in there. I do not like the texture of what we're looking at. Yeah, it's chunky.

4:25 It's like small dried leaves curled up. I think it looks more wet than that. Okay. I see what you're saying. So when in a vacuum, this is what it looks like, but it oxidizes. And it's like really dark when it's in the air. Sure. Okay. So the natural form of strontium is not actually hazardous at all. Like you can touch it, whatever. But the synthetic version is radioactive and one of the most dangerous components of nuclear fallout. And also it was used in the RTGs used in Russian lighthouses. And you covered snaps in episode. Which was the U .S. versions of RTGs.

5:07 I already forgot what that stands for. Radioactive Thermal Electric Generators. Yeah, they were mobile. That's what I think. They had a radioactive isotope and it would slowly decay over time and that process would create a small amount of electricity for a local onboard. basically generator battery. And so they took a small sample of radioactive material and then they'd be able to run something small and electrical for a really long time. So there's episode 65. Go listen to it. But they put these things in outer space. They put them in lighthouses. They put them on buoys to be long -term electrical power. Really kind of interesting.

5:51 Very cool. But dangerous. But that's, yeah, that's one of the components. Strontium. But the synthetic version, not the natural version. After its discovery, the main use was in the production of sugar from sugar beets. What? By a process called strontium process. It's like this whole chemical thing, lots of combining and, you know. So they would use this artificial strontium. The synthesized strontium? No. The synthetic one was radioactive. They used the natural version for sugar beets. Sugar beets. For the process of extracting something from the sugar beet? Sugar, yeah. Oh. That makes sense. You're like, oh. You didn't get beets out of it? Oh. But that chemical method is now obsolete, even though it was widely used the mid -1800s to 1900s. Okay. So it was around.

6:44 I think it was actually like one of the... the most used ways for them to get sugar out of sugar beets, but now there's better ways. And then after that, up to 75 % of strontium use was in making the glass tubes in colored TVs early on. Oh, okay. Because, I don't know if it was because they were dark or something, but they stopped x -ray emissions from those glass tubes. So essential for a household item. So I don't have x -ray emissions. So it's like a shielding component of the glass tube. And I got kind of excited because when it said that strontium was used in glass, I was like, oh my gosh, is this going to relate to like Fresnel lenses and stuff? But no. Our lenses require a lot more purity and clear glass. So obviously it couldn't be related.

7:35 But still pretty cool. I don't know anything about how TVs work. And then we moved to different display methods away from the glass tubes. And now strontium is not really used for a lot of things in our modern world. It's combined with other things to make glow -in -the -dark toys. So that's kind of fun. And they also do, they use it in deep red colored fireworks because when strontium burns, it's like maroon. Like they do a flame test to figure out like what. is in a sample or something and if there's red like a dark red then it's strontium that's so funny i always wonder what's in fireworks yeah there's all kinds of stuff i mean each color is just an element off the table yeah like yeah we just blow it up yeah might as well for fun and it's also used in the treatment of bone cancer this was like a whole fun interesting like um tangent i could have gone on because it's right below calcium on the periodic table and so it acts in a lot of the same ways which could be terrible if it was like the radioactive version yeah but the natural version it it like it's absorbed into your bones in the same way that calcium is just like a substitute and so um they use it for bone cancer treatment yeah because it's a it's like bioavailable for that purpose yeah that's really interesting so One quick question.

8:59 Maybe you don't know the answer. You said natural versus artificial, I think is the word. So it's artificial, it's synthesized, it's made. Yes. And it's probably radioactive because of the process of how it's made. Things are radioactive based on like electrons and stuff, aren't they? Oh, imbalance of protons and neutrons. So it's like unstable nucleus is why something is. Something's radioactive, which is interesting. So it's like the natural version is really stable, but if you make it unstable, it's radioactive. So like when we make it, when it's synthetic, it's because we mess up the nucleus on purpose. There's got to be some utility there. That's interesting.

9:44 Okay. And I do think the radioactive version is maybe also used in bone. Bone cancer treatment because it becomes a very targeted area for radioactive treatment. Because it's absorbed by the bone where it's needed most, that's where you can target it with radioactive treatment. So I don't know anything about it, but I think that's interesting. And that's our history buoy, Strontium. First time covering an element for our history buoy. And that's how we got our lighthouse today, Green Island in Ohio. Okay. Green Island is one of 21 small islands that make up the Erie Archipelago, which I didn't know that Erie had an archipelago.

10:33 I didn't know there was one. So here's a little picture I pulled up. Google does its best to show all the islands, but obviously it's not perfect. So if you zoom in really far on Google Maps, that's when you can start to see how Green Island is so tiny. On the map, it's not really visible. So, but it's right off the coast, the west coast of Put -in -Bay, which I just looked up the pronunciation of. I hope that's correct. Put -in -Bay, which is where our keepers go often for getting off of the island. Okay. That's where they always head. That's a close by. Yes. So the island wasn't well known until 1820 when the cliffs of the east end were discovered to be laden with strontium. What? Where are we going?

11:25 Are we going to go mine the strontium? Well, yes. They mined the island for strontium. And it became the main American source of the element and nicknamed Strontium Island because of that. And also there was a bunch of, like, the picture that I showed you is not how strontium looks when it's mined. It's like in gems and stuff. Oh, cool. It's like light blue crystals. Like, pretty cool. I wish I had made a page of, like, If you see it in nature, what does it look like? And then they mine it and extract the strontium. Yeah. Congress appropriated $5 ,000 for a lighthouse on the West End due to this whole mining effort that was happening. But the lighthouse wasn't completed until November 1854 due to a cholera epidemic, which I could also go on a humongous tangent on because it was like years of... Because it was in the water and nobody... It was like still during the time when everyone thought it was like miasma, you know, the air is dirty and that's where you get it from. It's like, you're drinking it. But this year is also when they discovered that it was passing through the water.

12:34 Colorado's wicked. Yeah, they got a good grip on it. Because there was a breakout not long before this either, like maybe in the 30s, also from the water supply. But they didn't figure it out then. Like, shoot. Terrible. So the mining was interrupted by the Colorado. The lighthouse building. It took like four years because of the color. Oh, God. The fourth order lens was installed in the lantern room, and then they discovered a defect in the revolving machinery, and so then the light wasn't lit until 1955. 1855. It happens, you know, drawbacks. The setbacks in construction, you know what I mean. Some machinist made a mistake. Yeah. So can you believe this picture was taken in the 1850s? Like 1858, I think it was. They took this photo. I'm like, we don't have a lot of photos that old. No, I can't really tell. Are there people in the middle?

13:27 Yeah, I think there's a guy. Looks kind of like a haunted film footage. It looks like, yeah, someone's attempt at making a 1850s photograph. Spooky. Black and white. Very low detail. High exposure. Yeah, the... The lighthouse and the keeper's house, I assume, are both visible, kind of. It looks like they're white. They really blend into the sky behind it. They're both made of brick, and the lighthouse was attached to a one -and -a -half -story keeper's dwelling and is a round tower with an octagonal lantern room with a 43 -foot focal plane. Cool. And it had a fixed white light with a flash every 150 seconds. Interesting interval. Mm -hmm. We've seen a couple of those before, just like bullseyes on a normal lens. Colonel, it's Colonel, right?

14:20 Colonel. Colonel, yes. The Colonel of Corn. Colonel Charles F. Drake was the first keeper and served until 1864 when the lighthouse went up in flames New Year's Day. No. And this, it's very famous. Like in this area, this whole event was like this humongous deal. Because it was one of the coldest days in history ever in the area. At 25 below zero Fahrenheit. Pretty cold. A strong storm had come through at the same time. So strong that the waves were 30 feet tall. Oh my. On Lake Erie. Like, that's crazy. And the keeper didn't wake from the fire until it had consumed all of the upper floors because the wind was so loud that you couldn't hear anything. And it was like sweeping away all the smoke. So they were just like blissfully unaware of the fact that the whole thing was going up in flames. It's getting colder in here. And warmer at the same time.

15:15 Oh yeah, it's like I'm getting spots of hot and spots of cold. Luckily, Charles Drake managed to bundle up his daughter and wife and took shelter in the outhouse where they hoped to survive the freezing night because... Okay, you can survive the fire, but you're outside in negative 25 degrees Fahrenheit all night long. No way. With the wind and it's like the storm, everything's wet, you know? Yeah, nothing waterproof at the time, I don't think. Yeah, and I think at first they had tried to put out the fire with like pails, but like, you know, what can you do? Eventually it's a lost cause and their hands are probably so cold. Their son, Pitt, was on Put -In -Bay for a New Year's party. and had no choice but to just wait until the storm subsided to go.

16:00 He can see the lighthouse in flames from where he is, and he just has no choice. He tried to go out, and everyone's like, you're just going to kill yourself. He'll die. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, they set out in the next morning when the storm had subsided, and they said that the water was slushy because it's mixed in with so much ice. had been so turbulent that it just turned into slushy. The outhouse was the only thing left standing out of all the buildings for the station, and though his family was suffering from exposure, they were alive. I'm shocked that they didn't go to the lighthouse. It's on fire. Well, but it's not made of wood, right? I mean, it has wood aspects. I mean, this is the 1850s, so. Oh, yeah. Even if something has broken the inside. They didn't have steel casings yet. Yeah, the inside was probably made of wood steps and stuff. The outhouse. That's crazy. I wonder where it was in comparison to this. Not connected, clearly. I wonder how the fire started up. Lantern?

17:03 Yeah, maybe. Cow kicked over a lantern. A classic. But what's even more crazy than them surviving in the only structure is that Charles Drake stayed as keeper when the new lighthouse was built a year later. And he stuck around for another like six years. What does that year look like? What? The year between having a building and not. Like, oh, let's pitch a tent, honey. Yeah, I don't know. We're going to build a new lighthouse. Somewhere else. I don't know. I don't know. Like, you'd have to get paid. That's crazy. I wonder if you get compensated for, like, disasters like this. I feel like not in these days. Because they lost everything inside the lighthouse. It was where they lived, so they just lost it all.

17:49 I know. But the new lighthouse went up in 1865. Ooh. It is really, really nice. They really pulled out all the stops. It's once again attached to a keeper's house, but the tower was square and made of limestone. And Charles Drake's wife... Mary was officially the assistant keeper at the new lighthouse, like listed and everything. And they both left in 1871. So a couple of years later. Yeah. This is a two car garage. It's probably a boat. The ramp. I was going to say they're on an Island. Why is there a garage? It is a garage for boats. That's so funny. That's funny. 1887. The light was changed to a fixed with a red flash every minute. So now we have red instead of white flash. I like that. And they also added a boat ramp and iron winch to make it easier to get to and leave the station, along with an iron oil house. Cool. That is cool. Heavy duty.

18:46 John Safe, who was keeper from 1899 to 1903, used to bring his kids to and from school in winter on Put -In -Bay, which is the closest place for them to go to school. But in the winter, he... Brought them by sled pulled by a team of greyhounds. And apparently could cover the frozen distance between the two islands in five minutes. I'm like, whoa. That's crazy. Also greyhounds? Yeah. I've never heard of greyhounds pulling a sled. Sure. They're very thin dogs. Those are the racing dogs. Yeah. But I mean. I guess if they're not. If it's five minutes each way. That's really impressive. I looked up sled dogs, and of course, you know, it's all like the winter stuff. I don't know. It's definitely greyhounds.

19:33 That's what they said. Cool. That's crazy. What a weird life. There's a video on Reddit, r slash greyhounds. There's a video of greyhounds pulling a sled. There you go. Don't let anyone tell you greyhounds can't be sled dogs. That's what it says. Yeah, what the heck. Like, that's cute. Proven in history. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, any dog can be a sled dog if they're like in a pack. I guess. I wonder how many he had. But they had like a barn where you could keep livestock, or in his case, dogs. The dog barn. The dog barn. That sounds awesome. So that was just a cool little fun fact. In 1905, keeper George Ferguson fell very ill. and his wife Bertha had to fetch a doctor from Put -In -Bay in a boat because nobody else lived on the island, and there was no way to communicate with the mainland or anybody.

20:23 Yeah, just had to make the trip. Yeah. So this incident established a flag system on the island to communicate with the keeper on South Bass Island, which I don't know where it is compared to this. Somewhere close by. Visible. Yeah. That was for during the day, and then the light flash, there was a light flash system by night to communicate. It's pretty cool. It is cool. 1926, the lighthouse was automated and active until 1939 when the Coast Guard built an automated light on an 80 -foot skeletal tower. Also, it doesn't look like our normal... It kind of looks like a cell phone tower. This has a light on top and replaced...

21:06 In what year? 1939. Wow. This is very strange. It's a skeletal tower. Yeah. Four sides. It doesn't taper or anything. It's just square all the way up. Like a tall rectangle. Yeah. There's a ladder that goes all the way to the top. So kind of crazy. It's kind of interesting. I don't know. It does look like a large telephone wire support. I don't know what I'm saying. I know what you're saying. every once in a while your telephone lines come to yeah the really big skeletal things how tall is this thing 80 feet wow like our lighthouse was they built it twice as tall as the lighthouse was it's kind of crazy that's cool yeah and no lighthouse but yeah whatever ruined everything but okay and this was built a thousand feet southwest of the lighthouse so not like right next to each other but In 1961, the island was transferred to the state of Ohio and became a wildlife refuge.

22:12 And in 1974, two fishermen landed on the island and started a fire. Great. There's different sources that say that it was on purpose or like maybe not fishermen, but just like teenagers or whatever. Well, they probably started a fire on purpose. Well, if this is the version that's correct, fishermen land are going to cook something, build a fire or whatever. And then it gets out of hand. But there also could have been like vandals on the island. So I went with a nicer one, which was fishermen. And this raged out of control and only the shell of the limestone lighthouse remained along with the oil house and the well. And now it is taken over by vegetation as, you know, many decades have passed since then. I have some pictures of what we have left on the island of Green Island Lighthouse in Ohio.

23:04 You can see the shell of the lighthouse survived actually quite well. Yeah, all the stone. Looks like most of the stone is still there. Obviously no more roof or anything. Dang, that sucks. So it probably burned the woods and everything that was around here. Yeah. And also that tall tower. The tall tower still is alive. That's surprising because it's wood too. It's steel. What? Skeletal tower. It looks a heck of a lot like wood. Really? Yeah. My eyes aren't very good, I guess. That looks like wood to me. Really? Yeah. That looks like steel. Breeze deeply. It was also, I don't know how far the fire went, but it definitely got the lighthouse. No question about it. Well, and in the photos of, you know, roughly today, the lighthouse is totally in the woods. Yeah.

23:58 Surrounded by trees. So it may have been at the time also. Yeah, I know that there were some trees around when it was in service, but obviously nothing like this. It's just like in the middle of a little forest. It actually looks pretty peaceful. But if I came across this, I would think that this was like a church, like an abandoned church or something, and then I'd be really spooky. Church tower, yeah. Spook, spook. Oh, I have another picture. Ooh. Yes. Here's our fourth order lens at the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, Ohio. And of course the Green Island Lighthouse is on the Lighthouse Digest doomsday list, which I will be covering in our next episode. Shame. So yeah, that's Green Island Lighthouse. Unfortunately, covering all the Green Island Lighthouses means that some are no longer in service or are on the doomsday list. And the doomsday list, which we'll talk about next time.

24:50 Yeah. You said this one is on that list? Yes. Okay. You're referring to another Green Island. There is another Green Island on the list, but I think they said that they took them both off recently because they're so far gone that it's completely unlikely that anyone will ever restore. Dang. I know. So it's like they are doomed. It's no longer a doomsday list. They're doomed. They are, what's the word? Condemned. Yeah. Condemned. Yeah. That's a shame. But we got to cover them all. Bring light to all of our lighthouses. All of the Green Islands. None of which probably have green light lighthouses. Hey, you can't say that. Hope they do. That would make sense.

25:33 I guess we're going to look at it and say, oh, that's green. That must be Green Island. We do have one coming. I know enough about all the Green Islands to know there is one with a green light. Nice. So it's exciting. A little series. Part one. Do you already have the order worked out of which Green Island is next and last? No, I don't. So if there's anyone listening who's a Green Island of any type fan, let us know. Yeah, it's coming. It's coming for you. So that's it. Make sure to listen to our podcast on our website, thelighthouselowdown .com. We can also leave us a review, watch our YouTube videos, send us an email. We love all of it. And we'll catch you next time on The Lighthouse. Blur.