![]() ![]() “It is gratifying to look back on that and think what happened during our time there that is being carried on,” Lee said. Lee was only the second MNHS site manager for Split Rock.ĭuring his 36-year tenure, the society built the visitor’s center the lighthouse was listed as a National Historic Landmark tours of the site, including one of the keeper’s houses and up into the lighthouse, were started and a calendar-worth of programming was created. “Over the years it took a lot of work, different assessments, to keep it working and keep it accessible to the public.” “It is really unique,” Lee said, because it is one of just a few lighthouses still with its original lens and equipment - and operational. Split Rock Lighthouse was operational from 1910 until 1969 when the United States Coast Guard decommissioned and deeded the lighthouse property, including all of the internal workings of the lighthouse, to the state of Minnesota. “Basically it was the maintenance, preservation and interpretation of the historic site,” Lee said. That included taking care of 11 historic buildings, hiring staff and maintaining good relationships with the local communities and other organizations like the Department of Natural Resources which oversees the 2,000-acre Split Rock Lighthouse State Park that surrounds the lighthouse. Despite those challenges, it was a great place to grow up and raise a family, the couple said.Īs site manager, Lee had responsibility for the upkeep of the entire 25-acre MNHS lighthouse site. On the other hand, the family also had to live with a lack of privacy for several months a year, as the site is a popular tourist attraction from late spring into fall. Living at Split Rock can be isolating, since the nearest town with a grocery store is 10 miles away and winter storms can knock out power or make roads impassable for days at a time. Lee and Jane had two children, John and Anna, both who lived their entire childhoods at the lighthouse. ![]() “I was doing that in a snow storm, putting the storm windows on that first year,” Lee said. The house the couple was to move into, the middle home of the row of three keeper houses at the site, hadn’t yet been prepared for winter. ![]() The newlyweds arrived at Split Rock, located about 10 miles from the city of Silver Bay, in November 1982, not exactly the best time to move. (Courtesy of JaneCane Photography, Amanda J. LIFE AT SPLIT ROCK The Radzak family - Anna, Lee, Jane and John Radzak. “Three months later, we got the job at Split Rock and moved up there,” Lee said. The couple were married in the late summer of 1982. As someone who lived most of his life in the Twin Cities and loved northern Minnesota, the Split Rock job appealed to Lee, and also to Jane. ![]() In 1982, the site manager position at the lighthouse came open and Lee applied. Jane’s mom came home and told her daughter all about the nice young man she had met. Her parents had Native American burial mounds near their lake property on Lake Henderson, and Jane’s mother went to a presentation held by Lee and the other archaeologists. The team even did a survey of Robbins Island in Willmar, finding evidence of human habitation. “We were finding things 5,000 years old in the county,” Lee said. In 1980, Lee spent the summer in Kandiyohi County. He worked on the statewide archaeological survey, where teams of archaeologists traveled the state looking to uncover and record the state’s prehistoric and historic sites and artifacts. Lee first started working for the Minnesota Historical Society as an archaeologist in 1976. JOURNEY TO SPLIT ROCK Lee Radzak in uniform like those worn by keepers at Split Rock Lighthouse on Minnesota’s North Shore. The book, priced at $19.95, can be purchased online at the historical society’s website at /products/view-split-rock. Jane came up with the idea to organize the book by the seasons,” Lee said. “Both our job and our personal life was ruled by the seasons. The book, “The View from Split Rock,” published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in 2021, tells the story of the lighthouse, Lee’s work at the site and the family’s adventures from fall through summer, living above the crashing waves of the largest Great Lake. Lee was approached about writing a book about his time as the lighthouse’s keeper. After his retirement in 2019, the couple moved to Jane’s hometown of Willmar. ![]()
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