The Lorain West Breakwater Light, also called the Lorain Harbor Light, is a

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens (optics), lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Ligh ...

Lorain, Ohio Lorain () is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States. It is located in Northeast Ohio on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Black River (Ohio), Black River about west of Cleveland. It is the List of cities in Ohio, ninth-most populous city in O ...

, United States. The light was built in 1917 on

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( ) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest avera ...

by the

United States Army Corps of Engineers The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wo ...

. It was taken out of service in 1965 when it was replaced by an automated light tower on a nearby

breakwater Breakwater may refer to: * Breakwater (structure), a structure for protecting a beach or harbour Places * Breakwater, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, Australia * Breakwater Island, Antarctica * Breakwater Islands, Nunavut, Canada * ...

. The light was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1978.

History

The original lens was a fourth order,

Fresnel Augustin-Jean Fresnel (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular th ...

that was installed in 1918. When the lighthouse was decommissioned, the Fresnel lens was relocated for use in a New York lighthouse. In 2021 the original Lorain Fresnel lens was returned to Lorain and is on display inside the Lorain Port Authority. The Lorain Lighthouse has been managed by the Lorain Lighthouse Foundation (formerly Port of Lorain Foundation) since 1990. The lighthouse has won "best lighthouse" by Lake Erie Living Magazine in 2013–2024.

References

External links

* * Buildings and structures in Lorain, Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Lorain County, Ohio Lighthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Lighthouses completed in 1917 Transportation in Lorain County, Ohio {{US-lighthouse-stub

History

References

Further reading

External links