Ashtabula’s first lighthouse was built in 1836 on a wooden crib about 40 feet square with a hexagon-shaped tower, connected by a ramp to the east pier of the Ashtabula River, and Captain Bigelow kept seven lamps burning with sperm whale oil. In 1876, because new dock facilities were constructed, a new lighthouse was built on the west pier head with a Fourth Order Fresnel fixed red light lens and a first class siren fog signal, and this four-sided, pyramid-shaped building with wooden clapboard siding served the harbor until a new lighthouse was built in 1905 after the river was widened and new dock construction was completed. Built about 2,500 feet north of the river entrance and the 1876 lighthouse, the 1905 light was preceded by river-widening work that left the 1876 structure 60 feet out in the river, giving it the appearance of a floating lighthouse, and during construction it actually floated when it was moved off its island or dock onto a barge until the 1905 lighthouse was finished. After that, both the old and new lighthouses could be reached only by boat, and until 1915 civilian keepers living at the Walnut Boulevard house that is now the Ashtabula Maritime and Surface Transportation Museum alternated duties and made relief trips by boat. Fayette E. Walworth was appointed keeper on February 6, 1894, and resigned for physical reasons on November 1, 1905; Charles W. Anderson succeeded him and served until 1915, when responsibility passed to the U.S. Coast Guard. In 1916 the light was moved about 1,750 feet north-northeast of the previous site, the structure was doubled in size, and a new 50-foot concrete crib was built to support a two-story steel building with iron plate that could house the keepers; the new light had a focal plane height of 51 feet, and a radio beacon tower was built beside it. An addition to the 1905 stone breakwall was built in 1915 from Walnut Beach, and the 1916 enlargement of the 1905 lighthouse when it was moved also created space for an emergency generator and a large air compressor with air storage tank. In 1959 the U.S. Coast Guard installed a new Fourth Order Fresnel lens light that rotated and emitted a three-second white flash visible up to 19 miles on a clear night; made in France in 1896, it remained in use until 1995, when the Coast Guard removed it for permanent display at the Ashtabula Maritime Museum. The lighthouse also had a foghorn that sounded two blasts every minute, a fog signal described in 1994 as an original siren Diaphone, and an automatic radio that transmitted a dash-dash-dot signal at a specific period, all important aids for ships entering and leaving the harbor. Although the beacon light was electric, the foghorn required immediate supervision, and the lighthouse remained manned by the U.S. Coast Guard until 1973, when it was automated as the last remaining manned light on Lake Erie.