pay television service Home Box Office (HBO), and Henson Associates.
#FRAGGLE ROCK LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER FULL#
Fransen says she's excited about the summer, but she's not sure if she'll apply for the full position.An international co-production of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, Fraggle Rock was co-produced by British television company Television South (TVS), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), U.S. "It's huge shoes to fill for sure for everybody," says Karly Fransen, who will fill in as interim manager for the summer season.įransen and her family will live in the lighthouse keeper's house. "And they represent man's humanity to man and trying to protect the people out on the water and that still resonates to people," he said. He says he thinks lighthouses are popular because they exist on the edge, of land and of water.
There can be huge crowds, and Radzak says people come from as far away as the East Coast and Texas. The staff holds a ceremony called the Muster of the Last Watch, where they ring a ship's bell for every member of the crew lost on the Fitzgerald. It's the one time visitors can enter the lamp room while the light is lit. 10, the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It was Radzak who in 1985 began the annual tradition of lighting the lantern on Nov. Reportedly they were so loud up close they would knock people to their knees if they were foolish enough to walk in front of them. Using a gas-powered air compressor, the horns could be heard 5 miles away. On days when they couldn't see they sounded the foghorns. The 252 cut glass prisms in the lens focused the light into a 7-foot beam visible for 22 miles. The keepers lit the lens with a kerosene lamp to warn ships away from the rocky shore. "But we were fortunate that they knew it would be protected by the state of Minnesota so they left it in place and we still have it here now." "Usually the Coast Guard pulls all the working apparatus out of a lighthouse when it is retired," he said. It's a huge Fresnel lens made by French glassworkers. The Minnesota Historical Society took over the lighthouse after the Coast Guard decommissioned it in 1969.Īt the top of the lighthouse is what Radzak calls Split Rock's crown jewel. "We got the keeper's logs of what the keepers did every day during their time here. "Some of them had really good photographs," he said. A boat dropped them off in the spring and picked them up in the fall. They lived in the three houses next to the lighthouse. "And 5 miles to the closest town for their mail."Ĭourtesy of Amanda J.
"There were three families that lived here pretty much on their own, other than some boat traffic going up and down the shore," he said. In those pre-Highway 61 days there was more solitude. "I was fortunate enough that back in the 1980s and '90s that the sons and daughters of the original lighthouse keepers that served in the 1910s and '20s were then in their 80s and 90s, and I had a chance to meet and talk with a lot of those folks, the kids that grew up here back in the early days," he said. "As a lighthouse goes, it was kind of a Johnny Come Lately," he said. There was a lot to learn, starting with the history. Split Rock attracted him as an opportunity to focus on one historic site and develop it. While people often describe him as the lighthouse keeper, his title is historic site manager. There are far fewer in winter, but they still come, even when it's below zero and the storms blow so hard the spray coats the buildings with ice. Split Rock attracts 160,000 visitors every year, about 2,500 a day during the summer.
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