Split Rock Lighthouse‘s 114th anniversary was celebrated on July 26 with special tours and a lighting of the beacon. The annual anniversary event commemorates the first lighting of the lighthouse’s beacon, which took place on July 31, 1910.
In its series The Slice, PBS North presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
For the new Twin Cities Public Television web series Outside Chance, host Chance York ventured to Two Harbors and Split Rock State Park for photography adventures with Christian Dalbec.
Split Rock Lighthouse stands along the western shore of Lake Superior, atop a soaring cliff. Dressed in cream-colored brick and elegant trim more fitting for a grand house in a genteel neighborhood, it once worked as a watchman holding a luminous light, warning ships about rocky shores at its feet.
It’s a crisp late-October morning. The last day of the season before the lighthouse shutters for the year. From an expansive autumn-blue sky, sunshine washes the landscape in gold. The temperature wanders just north of forty-five degrees. The air breathes softly.
My granddaughter, six, and grandson, four, are with me. It’s their first visit to the lighthouse. Because it’s a weekday and almost the last day the lighthouse will entertain visitors for the year, we are nearly alone on the grounds.
We climb the twisting steps of the lighthouse, just the three of us. We are quiet, and with nothing to arrest my attention, other than the shuffle of feet on the stairs, I travel decades back in time.
Strangely, or maybe not surprisingly, this Good Morning America feature feels more like a tourism commercial than a news package, but oh well. The opening scenes are in the Twin Cities, Duluth Pack is featured at the 3:03 mark and Split Rock Lighthouse gets some love at the end.
This undated postcard from Duluth Photo Engraving Company shows Ellingson Island at Little Two Harbors, the bay best known for its views of Split Rock Lighthouse.
On the list of iconic structures in the Arrowhead region, the Split Rock Lighthouse is probably #2 between the Aerial Lift Bridge and Enger Tower as the most photographed. It has been featured on an endless array of postcards over the past century.
Dawn LaPointe and Gary Fiedler of Radiant Spirit Gallery recently captured these scenes of Split Rock Lighthouse.
A Minneapolis family takes on the shores of Lake Superior in early in November during a weekend trip. Music: “Let’s Be Still” by the Head and the Heart.
