Built in 1871. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1971. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Fairport Harbor Light, also known as the Grand River Light, is a lighthouse located on Lake Erie in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. It is one of two lighthouses in Fairport Harbor, along with the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light.”
Wikipedia article Fairport Harbor Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 75 National Register listings in Lake County · listed in 1971 · category: Structure · built in 1871 · one of 2 National Historic Landmarks in Lake County.
National Register reference number.71000642- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
1 since 2002
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Fairport Marine Museum between
2002 and 2002, burning about 0 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Arson/incendiarism
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,066 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Fairport Marine Museum between 1864 and
1975: 814 Animalia, 135 Plantae, 98 Fungi, 10 Chromista, 6 Protozoa, 3 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. Doolittle, A. F. Clewell, A. Woolman and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
5 workings within 5 miles of Fairport Marine Museum: 3 producers, 2 past producers.
3 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Halite, Salt, Calcium. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Fairport Harbor, the town this property stands in, in 10 storm reports between 1994 and 2023: 5 thunderstorm wind, 4 waterspout, 1 flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Heavy rain and rapid snow melt led to a rapid rise in the Grand River at Painesville, which reached moderate flood stage with a crest of 13.29 feet. Rainfall reports across the basin ranged from 1.6 to 2.2 which fell mainly during the early morning hours of February 28th. Six to ten inches of heavy snow was on the ground at the onset of the rain. This snow rapidly melted as temperatures warmed into the 50s on the 28th. Up to an additional inch of water equivalent rainfall was released from the melted snow. Over 100 homes in and around Painesville had to be evacuated because of the rising flood waters. In Fairport Harbor several homes near the Grand River had flooded basements. Numerous roads across the county were flooded.
At least ten waterspouts were observed on Lake Erie just north of Fairport Harbor. Several of the waterspouts made it to shore, but then quickly dissipated. No damage occurred.
2 papers published in this town,
digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 0 issues,
0 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be
looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
1,993 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
On top of that is the foundation limestone, which extends to the surface of the light in the 1825 tower) was placed in the tower. It shone at a height of 102-1/4 feet above lake level and could be seen 18-1/2 statute miles. on the first floor, and a hall with one room to a side on the upper level. The two fireplaces are still standing. In the middle of the west wall a doorway has been cut. This leads to the pilot house addition, built which led directly to the tower, through a covered passageway. This passageway had been removed and the doorway bricked over before the Fairport among other exhibits, a large authentic scale model of a modern Great Lakes CONDITION Excellent Ruins is equipped accordingly.
Original Site Fair The present Fairport lighthouse is a handsomely-proportioned Berea sandstone the original third-order lens from Fairport lighthouse.This room was the ground.Forty-five courses of sandstone blocks comprise the main part which consists of pilings driven flush with the bottom of an excavation A lens room and observation platform are built above this, and the roof is on this rehabilitated porch. The lighthouse itself is the main attraction in 1967 and originally part of the Great Lakes carrier Str.Frontenac.It Harbor Historical Society had access to the premises. this pile-supported slab is a grillage of two courses of 12-inch timber.
topped with a copper dome.A fixed white light of the third as originally known as the oil room,"in which the keeper kept his supplies of the tower.A spiral staircase of 69 steps is built into the brick linings of the surrounding area. The tower was connected by a covered way with the keeper's dwelling. block structure in the form of a truncated cone.
the adjacent keeper's dwelling, is located on a hill overlooking the 1871 to replace the original brick lighthouse and frame dwelling built in 1825 and designed by Jonathan Goldsmith, well-known early Western For one hundred years, from 1825 to 1925, the third-order light guided This year, 1971, the 1871 lighthouse, which was decommissioned in 1925, Briefly stated, it was an important gateway to Ohio's Connecticut Western boats anchored in the shelter of the harbor in its early days, guided of the "Underground Railroad" before the Civil War. Fairport Marine Museum, which occupies this former Fairport Harbor Coast Guard Light Station Reservation, is the first and only Great Lakes light- ment, functional in its design, yet esthetically quite pleasing.
1871 Art Conservation Engineering Communications losophy Architecture Education Transportation SIGNIFICANCE Aboriginal Literature itarian Theater Science Industry Prehistoric Landscape Music Religion/Phi- Reserve architect. Sculpture Fairport Harbor Historical Society specifically for the purpose of harbor for the early immigrant passenger ships and freighters bound from preserving the lighthouse and historic traditions and sentiment of Fairport there by the Fairport beacon.
Social/Human- Invention unloaders with their cargoes of limestone and sand and gravel that enter Fairport Marine Museum, which consists of the present lighthouse and The lighthouse also served as guardian of one of the northern terminals Buffalo to the upper Great Lakes ports.In contrast to the modern self- significance from that of the port it served. Military the property for historical purposes.The Village leases the property to Reserve when new settlers from the East were arriving by water by way of mariners on Lake Erie to an easy-access harbor at Fairport Harbor, Ohio. of Fairport in June,1953 under a conditional deed relative to the use of the Historical Society for $1.00 per year.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 71000642, 12 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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