The activity was part of Senior Day, which came with a $5 admission for seniors. The event was part of the museum’s celebration of Maritime Month, with other events scheduled throughout August.

The weather cooperated for the day, which helped volunteer Craig Kitchen lead a tour of the Marquette Harbor Lighthouse.

That’s a sight many local residents and tourists see from a boat ride on Lake Superior or walking on the breakwater in the Lower Harbor, but not up close.

Seniors had that chance Tuesday when Kitchen talked about topics like the history of the U.S. Life-Saving Service and the lighthouse.

Craig Kitchen, left, a volunteer for the Marquette Maritime Museum, starts to lead a tour of the lighthouse Tuesday during Senior Day. Seniors received a reduced admission price and got to take a scavenger hunt. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

The museum and lighthouse are open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays until mid-October. And although that affords people plenty of opportunities to go on a lighthouse tour, not everybody has taken one.

“Most of the people that go on these have not seen it,” Kitchen said.

He provided a lot of background to make the tour more meaningful.

“The lighthouse used to be at the end of the cement, and there’s a tunnel inside of that breakwater so the people could go out and service the lighthouse at any time,” Kitchen said. “Of course, the reason they needed that is sometimes it’s not safe to go out on the breakwater, but the lighthouse might need to be serviced, and they would have a way of doing that.”

That tunnel, though, no longer is there.

Another interesting fact the visitors learned from Kitchen was that every beacon in the United States flashes a unique sequence of light, with the Marquette Lighthouse’s beacon flashing every 10¢ seconds.

So, if a boat is coming into the harbor and the operators are confused about their location, they can note the time between flashes and know they’re in Marquette, he said.

“The other thing about the lighthouse is it’s red,” Kitchen said. “When you’re coming into harbor, the buoys that are in the harbor, the red ones, are always kept on the right. Well, when you’re coming into Marquette Harbor, you also keep the lighthouse on your right because it’s red. So, in that way, it’s a navigational aid.”

Joanne Gwinn, of Marquette, took part in the scavenger hunt before going on a lighthouse tour.

The hunt, of course, had a Great Lakes maritime theme.

“It was about the movie that we saw and also all the written material that was throughout the museum, and it was fun,” Gwinn said.

Tuesday marked the second time she visited the museum, although she got new insights.

“It was a different movie this time,” Gwinn said.

Tuesday’s movie, she said, was about Stannard Rock and the restoration of its Fresnel lens after it was returned to the remote lighthouse, located about 45 miles north from the Marquette harbor. In fact, the lighthouse atop the reef has been dubbed “the loneliest spot in the United States” because of its remoteness.

What did she learn from the film?

“That they couldn’t find it for years,” Gwinn said of the Fresnel lens. “It was missing for the last seven years.”

According to lighthousefriends.com, the whereabouts of the Fresnel lens was a mystery until local maritime historian Fred Stonehouse learned in 1999 the lens was likely at a Coast Guard warehouse in Maryland. It turned out that was indeed the location of the missing artifacts.

The museum itself is full of artifacts, including the four-ton Fresnel lens from Stannard Rock and boat replicas. There also are photographs and information about local shipwrecks, with the exhibit allowing visitors to find the wrecks’ locations via corresponding numbers on a map.

Other exhibits focus on the famous Edmund Fitzgerald incident, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Life-Saving Service and other maritime topics.

However, the scavenger hunt was a fun activity unique to Senior Day.

Museum Director Hilary Billman said that upon completion of the 10-question quiz, enamel badges would be awarded.

Tuesday’s Senior Day was the first such day the museum has had all summer, she said.

“We’ve never done a Senior Day scavenger hunt before either, so this is brand new,” Billman said, later adding, “I’m thinking about next summer, doing it once a month. It’s a good thing.”

For more information on the Marquette Maritime Museum, call 906-226-2006, email info@mqtmaritimemuseum.com or visit mqmaritimemuseum.com.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.