In 1848, Captain Justice Bailey was sailing southward on Lake Michigan when a storm drove him and his crew to seek refuge in a nearby bay. After stepping onto the sand to explore it, he realized he could profit from harvesting lumber from the boreal forest there. Baileys Harbor thus became the first town in Door County and a port for shipping lumber to Milwaukee and Chicago. In 1869, the Upper and Lower Range Lights were built to work in tandem and steer ships safely into the harbor, a difficult task because Baileys Harbor is horseshoe-shaped and has shallow, rocky shoals at the mouth of the bay. The white light of the Upper Range Light is 17 feet higher than the red light of the Lower Range Light, and about 4 miles out on Lake Michigan, ships would line up the white and red lights vertically to be on range and stay safely on course into the harbor. The Range Lights remained active until 1969, when they were replaced with a day shape on the south side of Ridges Road. After restoration of the Lower Range Light in 2013, volunteers of The Ridges petitioned the Coast Guard to reactivate the Range Lights. In 2015, permission was granted, the day shape was removed, and today the Baileys Harbor Range Lights can be used to navigate into Baileys Harbor when modern navigational aids are unavailable.