Life Saving Station / Life Saving Station

Here stood the Two-Hearted River Life Saving Station, built in 1876. This station, like many others on the Great Lakes, was of the second class—erected at a cost of $4,790 and manned by volunteer crews. The facility, a simple two-story building with a small lookout tower, housed a lifeboat and other necessary equipment for recovering endangered sailors. An average crew consisted of six to eight experienced surfmen. In 1915 the Life Saving Service was integrated into the U.S. Coast Guard. Several shipwrecks occurred near the mouth of the Two-Hearted River, also referred to as the Twin River and the Big Two-Hearted River. Among these were the Cleveland (1864), the W. W. Arnold (1869), and the Sumatra (1875). After construction of the lifesaving station here in 1876, the lifesavers were responsible for brave rescues in the Satellite (1879) and the Phineas S. Marsh (1896) disasters. The station was decommissioned in the 1930s and the structure was razed in 1944.