Civil War Confederate Soldiers Cemetery, Marblehead Lighthouse

The Cemetery is all that is left indicating that a Union Civil War prison was sited on Johnson’s Island in Sandusky Bay.  The sign says that the prison buildings are all removed, and that only a shallow ditch is all that is an indication that anything was ever here.  The Cemetery is sited only about a mile from the Keepers House and the Marblehead Lighthouse.

The Cemetery’s fence and gates are well marked, and the grounds are well kept.

The monument and bronze statue was placed in 1910 by the Daughters of the Confederacy of Cincinnati, Ohio.  The sign boards portray a dismal life in the prison.

This wide picture show the placement of some of 206 headstones, and a surprising number of them, 52 are listed as unknown. 

Our visit to the Marblehead Lighthouse looked to be an exciting visit at first.  When we arrived there was quite a crowd of people at the base of the lighthouse, and there was even a group of tourists at the top.  I haven’t ever heard of a lighthouse that allowed visitors to actually climb to the top, but this one was fairly short.  Anne-Marie and I read the signs, and went into a display area, and looked at the maps on the wall, and as we always try to do, read nearly everything about the history of the attraction.  When we finally walked over to the lighthouse, the crowd had dispersed, and no one was on the top level of the lighthouse, and the door was locked.  I walked to the museums door, and it was also locked.  I checked the sign in the door, and the museum and lighthouse both close at 4:00 in the afternoon, the time was now 4:06. 

The grounds were open till dusk, so we read the rest of the sign boards, looked at the fossils in the limestone at the waters edge, and looked for a place to have dinner.  We need to return here on a clear day to climb to the top of the Lighthouse.  This wide picture shows the keepers house, that replaced the stone one 2 miles away.

Anne-Marie and I found a really neat restaurant, right on the beach of Lake Erie, for dinner.  We noticed as we were parking the van, that off in the distance, was a nuclear  power plant.  The picture of Anne-Marie with the cooling tower and steam was taken from our table on the deck.

We had a busy and hard day of touring yesterday, and I even chased down tour boat companies for brochures on rates and schedule.  After two shopping stops we finally arrived back to the trailer at 7:45PM.