The Not-So-Lonely Lighthouse

Almost every coastal vacation destination has a lighthouse where you can drive up, snap a few photos, and then drive on. The tall towers come in so many sizes, stripes, and colors they demand a stop. But for some of us, a drive-by isn’t enough to satiate our curiosity about what it’s like to live in these iconic beacons. Luckily, several historic lighthouses have been transformed into inns where guests can find out for themselves.

My husband, Zack, and I had been anticipating a weekend away from the Twin Cities at a mysterious lighthouse full of quiet solitude, the only sound being the crashing of waves during a storm. Would there be electricity? I brought a candle in case there wasn’t. What about heat? Long johns and wool sweaters were in the backseat.

We arrived at The Lighthouse B & B in Two Harbors in the early evening when the small town was already getting sleepy. A gravel road led us to the rear of the lighthouse, which is an extension of the keeper’s house. Below the quietly buzzing, rotating light atop the lighthouse was a tiny space where I had envisioned us sleeping, but it had room for no more than a desk. On the floor below that were three bedrooms and a beautiful shared bathroom. Our room, the Keeper’s Room, came equipped with heating, blankets, and period lamps, plus quilts, slippers, robes, and even shampoo in a little corked bottle. It started to feel as if a Four Seasons hotel had imposed on my idea of roughing it.

Two Harbors’ Lighthouse, furnished in period antiques and replicas, is run by the Lake County Historical Society and differs in some substantial ways from a traditional B & B. With no staff on-site at most times, the guests, AKA assistant lighthouse keepers, are called on to keep the grounds clean, monitor the light rotation, and help out with a handful of other chores. Other guests showed us the ropes—everything from how to operate the light tower to making tea. They told us about our duties as assistant keepers, how to record our chores in the daily log, and how we’d be rewarded at breakfast.

The Keeper’s Room, though not ringed in glass, did have a window framing Lake Superior. Instead of the fall storm Zack and I had been waiting for, it was an unseasonably warm weekend, the kind where people look at you funny if you put on a hat and gloves. We dropped our coats and settled into the living room, playing checkers and reading before we retired. It was eerily quiet (creepy or peaceful, depending on your taste), and I started to wonder how former lighthouse keepers got by without company.

Bob Anderson, who’s on the board of the Historical Society, told me The Lighthouse was never all that empty, unlike the solitary Split Rock Lighthouse to its northeast. Former keepers could walk downtown and always had their families with them. At one time, the keeper had eleven children, filling the same three bedrooms there are now; the assistant keeper had his own bedroom; and the third keeper lived in town.

As Minnesota’s oldest operating lighthouse on Lake Superior’s North Shore, The Lighthouse has been guiding ore boats and small watercraft since 1892, transmitting the same light pattern—twenty seconds makes a full rotation—for 113 years. The U.S. Coast Guard took control of the operation in 1939, and the Historical Society leased the lighthouse from it in 1985. It took the proverbial act of Congress to transfer ownership to the Historical Society in 1999. Shortly after the legislation passed, renovation began and the B & B opened.