New buildings may be rising, but they will help you enter the past as work continues at Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, located inside Peninsula State Park. The foundation for the site’s reconstructed barn and summer kitchen is poured in anticipation that the buildings will be up and enclosed ahead of the lighthouse’s opening Memorial Day weekend. It is a part of a $2 million restoration project helping return Eagle Bluff Lighthouse to what it was like when it was operational between 1868 and 1926. Door County Historical Society Executive Director Amy Frank says that by reconstructing the barn and the summer kitchen, visitors will better understand what life was like as a lighthouse keeper, giving the organization more space for its operations.

Frank hopes the summer kitchen and barn will be open and in use in August. In the interim, you will be able to tour the lighthouse and see up close how the restoration process is progressing when it opens for the season May 23rd. The Door County Historical Society has raised over $3.2 million to reimagine the historic site.