A U.S. Life Saving Service Station was established across the harbor entrance from this light station in 1912, and its well trained, locally recruited crew carried out many heroic rescues on stormy Lake Superior alongside the light and fog signal there. Its most notable rescue came on November 11, 1913, when Capt. Charles Tucker and his crew of eight men saved 29 people from the ice-encrusted steamer L. C. WALDO at Gull Rock; they and the men of the Portage Life Saving Station, who also aided in the rescue, received gold medals from the U.S. Treasury Department. In 1915 the U.S. Life Saving Service became part of the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Eagle Harbor Station continued as a Coast Guard search and rescue station into the 1950's. A Navy Radio Compass Station was later installed next to the Coast Guard Station in the early 1920's, transmitting direction-finding radio signals for mariners until a radio beacon was installed at the light station in 1929.