The Old Michigan City Lighthouse
Indiana
The Old Michigan City Lighthouse stands at the southern end of Lake Michigan in Indiana, built in eighteen fifty-eight to guide vessels into Trail Creek harbor. What makes it unusual is who tended it. Harriet Colfax, a local woman said to be a cousin of Vice President Schuyler Colfax, was appointed lighthouse keeper in eighteen sixty-one and served for over forty years, retiring in nineteen four at the age of eighty.
Her appointment was rare for a woman in the Civil War era, and her longevity even rarer. She maintained the light through brutal Lake Michigan winters, ice storms, and the logistical difficulties of a one-person posting. The light was decommissioned after a new pier-head light was built, and the old light now houses a local history museum.
It remains one of the oldest surviving lighthouses on the Indiana lakeshore.
