Thirty mile point

by Sonali Gangane

Title

Thirty mile point

Artist

Sonali Gangane

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse is quite isolated, being some distance from any major port or city. This is because the lighthouse wasn�t built to guide mariners to a safe harbor, but rather as a coastal light, warning mariners of shoals and guiding them along this portion of Lake Ontario.
Prior to the establishment of the lighthouse, at least four ships had sunk near Thirty Mile Point, including one belonging to the French explorer LaSalle in 1678. The most tragic loss appears to be the schooner H.M.S. Ontario. She was built in 1780, and in October of that year departed Fort Niagara for Montreal, carrying eighty-eight passengers, including Lt. Colonel Bolton former commander of the fort, and an army payroll of $15,000 in gold and silver. The Ontario foundered off Thirty Mile Point in a Halloween blizzard. There were no survivors.
The area around Thirty Mile Point is also known as Golden Hill. In 1834, a local farmer named Daniel Cartwright was herding cattle along the creek that empties into the lake near the point, when he saw men row ashore from an anchored ship and unearth a chest from the creek bank. The secreted bounty, believed by Cartwright to be gold buried by the survivors of a shipwreck, was carried back to the ship, where the men raised anchor and sailed off. Based on this tale, treasure hunters have dug along the creek in search of more hidden gold. Despite this incident, the more probable origin of the name Golden Hill, found on early French maps, is a one-acre island, covered with goldenrod blossoms during the summer, that once existed at the mouth of the creek.
In 1872 the Lighthouse Board recommended �that a lake-coast light be established near the point where the boundary line between Niagara and Orleans Counties intersects the south shore of Lake Ontario.� This point, the northernmost point on Lake Ontario�s southern shore, was designated on some maps as Thirty Mile Point, being thirty miles from the mouth of the Niagara River. At that time, the first light east of the Niagara River was a fourth-order pier light at Oak Orchard, forty-five miles from the Niagara River. As this beacon was of little service to ships making for the Welland Canal, the Lighthouse Board requested $30,000 for a third-order light at Thirty Mile Point.
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September 20th, 2013

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