Sherwood Point Lighthouse

The last hand-operated lighthouse on the Great Lakes, built in 1883 on Door County's peninsula. It guided ships between Green Bay and Lake Michigan until a 1983 automation finally shut the keeper out.

Sherwood Point Lighthouse was completed on September 28, 1883, after Congress appropriated twelve thousand dollars for a navigational aid at the entrance to the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal on Green Bay. A crew of twenty men built the one-and-a-half-story keeper's dwelling topped with a ten-sided cast-iron lantern room, using red bricks shipped from Detroit rather than the cream-colored brick typical of Door County lighthouses. A fourth-order Fresnel lens manufactured in France was first displayed by keeper Henry Stanley on October 10, 1883, its fixed white light with alternating red flash visible for fifteen miles in clear weather.

Stanley, a Norwegian immigrant born in 1823, had previously served fifteen years at Eagle Bluff Lighthouse. His niece Minnie Hesh, a twenty-one-year-old orphan from Brooklyn, arrived at the lighthouse in the summer of 1884 after her parents died. She threw herself into lighthouse duties, particularly when the lens's complex clockwork mechanism broke and required manual operation. In August 1889, Minnie married William Cochems, a Sturgeon Bay local and son of prominent businessman Mathias Cochems, in a ceremony near the lighthouse. After William's hardware business failed during the Panic of 1893, both returned to Sherwood Point, where William was hired as a laborer by Keeper Stanley. In May 1895, William was promoted to assistant keeper when Stanley fell ill, and he became head keeper on October 13, 1895, following Stanley's death. Minnie was officially appointed assistant keeper in 1898, one of the few women to hold such a post, a position she would serve for the remaining thirty years of her life. Together they tended the light for nearly four decades, Minnie managing the household while William maintained the fog signal and its six-hundred-pound bell that required winding every four hours.

Minnie suffered a fatal heart attack while getting out of bed in an upstairs bedroom on August 17, 1928. William created a memorial stone birdbath on the grounds in her honor and continued serving until his retirement in 1933, having spent nearly thirty-nine years at a single lighthouse. But according to Coast Guard personnel, visitors, and generations of guests who have stayed at the keeper's cottage, Minnie never truly left.

The first reports emerged shortly after her death. Coast Guard personnel stationed at the light described footsteps ascending the stairs when no one else was in the building, followed by a woman's laughter and the unmistakable sound of dishes being washed and china being arranged. In one often-retold incident, a young Coast Guardsman and his wife arrived at the station for a vacation, left dirty dishes after a hurried dinner, and were startled by the sound of footsteps on the stairs followed by a woman's laugh and the clatter of dishes being cleaned. Visitors have also reported finding beds neatly made that had been left rumpled, objects straightened on tables, and a persistent sense of a watchful presence. A figure has been seen on the staircase, described as a woman in period dress who vanishes when approached directly.

In 1984, a year after the lighthouse became the last on the Great Lakes to be automated after exactly one hundred years of manned service, Robert Cochems, a family descendant, photographed the building and captured what appears to be a human form in one of the windows. The photograph was widely circulated and remains one of the most discussed pieces of evidence. The Northern Alliance of Paranormal Investigators was invited to examine the site, though equipment malfunctions reportedly hindered their investigation. Gayle Soucek documented the haunting in her book Haunted Door County, writing that although Minnie has been dead for more than eighty-five years, her hospitality has never wavered. Coast Guard personnel who tend the property say it is simply Minnie welcoming her guests. The lighthouse, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, remains active Coast Guard property but opens its grounds during Door County Lighthouse Passport Days in May, June, August, and October, when Fireside Chat events feature bonfires, s'mores, and ghost stories about Minnie. The original Fresnel lens was removed in 2002 and is now displayed at the Door County Maritime Museum in Sturgeon Bay.