The Colchester Reef Lighthouse has been around for 146 years and has housed 11 keepers, so there are a few crazy stories surrounding it.

 

       Once a week, Lorenz rowed to Port Douglas to pick up supplies. One cold day in late autumn, he was headed back home when a comb ination of an east wind and lake spray worked to form a thin coat of water on his back. Lorenz kept rowing, unaware that with only the movement of his arms, the coat of water had frozen and then grown thicker and thicker with each new layer of spray that landed on his back. By the time he reached the lighthouse, the sheath of ice was so thick that Lorenz was frozen fast to his dory. Fortunately, he was carrying a knife, and eventually freed himself by chipping away the ice.

 

       August Lorenz, a six-foot-tall, 200-pound man who enjoyed his solitude, took on the job of keeper of Colchester Reef in 1909. While living in New York City, Lorenz had dreamed of the pastoral life. He struck up a correspondence with William Howard, the Colchester Reef Lightkeeper at the time who longed for the city. The two decided to just switch jobs so they met halfway between to trade their tools.

 

       On January 29, 1888, Keeper Walter Button’s wife Harriet went into labor, and Walter promptly rang the fog bell, a prearranged signal for someone on shore to notify the doctor.  The doctor and his assistant reached the shore just as it was getting dark, but the ice too thin to cross, and too thick to get a boat through.  The pair decided to risk it and began to cross the ice on foot. When they were about halfway to their patient, the piece of ice they were on broke off, leaving the two men stranded. They drifted north, eventually making it to the shores of South Hero Island, four miles from where they began their journey.  Myrtle Edna Button was born that night without the doctor.  She grew up to give birth to Fred McCarthyhave, whose estate funded most of the $130,000 new foundation for the lighthouse and a wheelchair accessible entrance in 2009.