Kenosha Light Station
lighthouse in Wisconsin, United States
Kenosha Light Station (also called Southport Light Station) is a lighthouse and keeper's house on Simmons Island north of the channel into Kenosha's harbor in Kenosha County, Wisconsin.
History
Also known as the "Old Kenosha Light", the lighthouse was replaced by the Kenosha North Pier Light in 1906. The keeper's house continued to be used for many years, however.
The light is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Kenosha Light Station, Reference #90000995. It has been an active aid to navigation since 1996, but is not listed in Volume VII United States Coast Guard light list. The lantern room was removed in 1913 but replicated in 1994. The Fresnel lens was replaced by a 300 mm Tidaland Signal plastic lens – a medium range lens commonly used on the Great Lakes.
A historical marker in front of the lighthouse reads:
Built by the federal government in 1866, the Kenosha Lighthouse replaces two other lighthouses constructed at this site in 1848 and 1858. Originally designated a coast and harbor light for Southport, now Kenosha, Wisconsin provided the first navigational illumination a mariner would see upon entering Wisconsin from the Chicago area. Standing 55 feet (17 m) tall and situated on a hill, the lighthouse projected light from 74 feet (23 m) above lake level.
The public source identifies “Kenosha Light Station” as lighthouse in Wisconsin, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kenosha, Light and Station.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6391310. Authority coordinates are 42.589, -87.816. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1996, 1913 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kenosha Light Station” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.