It wasn’t just fireworks lighting up the night sky in Two Harbors, Minn., this Fourth of July.

For the first time in six years, the iconic light from the North Shore city’s lighthouse beacon 25 miles northeast of Duluth will once again sweep across Lake Superior.

The lighthouse’s light went dark in November 2019 due to a hardware failure. With help from the U.S. Coast Guard, four volunteer lighthouse keepers with the Lake County Historical Society — which owns the lighthouse— installed a temporary beacon so the facility could continue to operate as a private aid to navigation on the lake.

But it’s a flashing light, “that detracts a little bit from that iconic beacon that you see sweeping across Agate Bay,” said Ellen Lynch, executive director of the historical society.

So the organization began fundraising to purchase a new light. It raised $50,000 and bought an LED beacon from a Finnish company that mimics the rotational sweeping pattern of the original lighthouse.

And now the Lake County Historical Society planned to light the new beacon on July 4 as part of a celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the organization, just before the Independence Day fireworks show.

“This has been a long journey for us — from fundraising to installation — and we’re incredibly proud of what our community has accomplished,” said Sam Gangi, president of the historical society board.

The Two Harbors lighthouse is the oldest continuously operating light on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was built in 1893 (17 years before the more well-known Split Rock Lighthouse was completed) to guide ships into the iron ore docks that were built in Agate Bay a decade earlier.

The Historical Society took ownership of the structure in 1999. It operates a museum and bed-and-breakfast, and is also responsible to the U.S. Coast Guard for keeping it lit as a “private aid to navigation.” And now that light will look much like it did over a century ago.

“The new beacon will bring back that iconic sweep and signature of our original light and be as close as possible to the original,” Lynch said.

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Napheesa Collier scored 22 points and the Minnesota Lynx topped the Golden State Valkyries 82-71 on Saturday night.

The Valkyrie took a 56-54 lead in the middle of the third quarter with a 10-0 run that started with a pair of 3-pointers by Tiffany Hayes but the Lynx closed with a 15-4 run to take a 69-60 lead into the fourth quarter.

Minnesota pushed the lead to 78-63 on Kayla McBride’s 3-pointer with 4:16 to play.

Courtney Williams scored 15 points for the Lynx (16-2) and McBride added 12.

Hayes had a season-high 23 points for Golden State (9-8), which had won two straight and four of five. Kayla Thornton scored 13 points, but only two after the first quarter. Stephanie Talbot added 10.

Minnesota shot 53% and put together a 14-0 run to take a 25-18 lead after one quarter. The Valkyrie made two early 3-pointers but missed their next eight.

Collier had six straight Lynx points early in the second quarter for a 10-point lead and hit a 3 with 2:46 to go until halftime for a 41-31 lead. Monique Billings scored the next five points for the Valkyries to make it 41-36 at the break.

Up next

The Valkyries play the second of four road games Monday at Atlanta. The Lynx host Chicago on Sunday.

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A 13-year-old Naytahwaush, Minn., boy was pronounced dead after a lit firework he was holding went off and struck him in the chest, according to a Mahnomen County Sheriff’s Office press release.

At approximately 11:14 p.m. on July 4, law enforcement responded to a residence on New Circle Drive in Naytahwaush on a report that 13-year-old Michael Turner had been struck with a firework.

Upon arrival, law enforcement observed that Turner was not breathing and had no pulse. CPR was performed until medics arrived, and life-saving measures were continued until Turner was pronounced deceased at 12:07 a.m.

According to witness statements, Turner was holding a large firework in his hands and pointing it away from himself while it was lit. When the firework went off, it shot through the bottom of the tube and hit Turner in the chest. Another witness stated that the tube hit Turner in the chest, causing him to fall to the ground, clutching his chest.

Bystanders ran to Turner’s aid and began chest compressions.

This incident remains under investigation pending an autopsy. The family has been notified.

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It isn’t much of a Fourth of July expectation. It won’t pop or go bang or even challenge the wildest imagination, but if you come across a St. Paul storm sewer opening absent its protective grate, call 651-266-9700, wait for the prompt and report it to the sewer crew. If you see it happening, call 911. Personally, I would pin the creep, or creeps, up against a tree with my car, but I suppose that would be insensitive.

About 10 days or so ago, it was reported that vandals had pried loose more than 150 sewer grates and let them fall into the basin. The grates weigh 150 pounds. This doesn’t play well with guys predisposed to neurosis anyway. We don’t need a kid thrown off a scooter or a walker in the gloaming breaking an ankle or a bicyclist going ass over teakettle. I had to look that phrase up, having used it all my life. It means what you think it means, suddenly losing control and balance and taking a tumble. Why tea kettle? Couldn’t find an answer.

“I don’t think anybody would drown,” Sean Kershaw, the city’s director of public works, said, “you wouldn’t enter the sewer system, but you could get a concussion or break something.”

Kershaw said it isn’t happening in other cities. The grates are not being stolen and then sold. He wonders if it’s a TikTok challenge. The police have not arrested anybody yet and Kershaw’s crews fetch the grates out of the basin with hooks and put them back in place as soon as they get a report.

“We don’t know what to think,” Kershaw said. “We’ve kicked around the idea that somebody might think something good or bad might be coming out of the sewer.”

Oh, no.

“You mean like a clown with a balloon?”

“What was that movie?” Kershaw said.

“’It,’” I said, surprised that I remembered. I’m not much of a Stephen King loyalist, although I went through that whole terrified-of-clowns thing with kids I used to have.

Kershaw runs a tight ship. He takes his work seriously, which tends to stand out when you consider that we don’t know when members of the least diverse city council in the county even bother to show up for work. It bothers Kershaw that he can’t come up with a reason that somebody would do something so pointless and so dangerous. First darkened street lights and now this, gaping open sewer basins. It probably isn’t a clown with a balloon, but the way this city is going, nothing would surprise me, not even the city’s sewer system suddenly in the hands of the paranormal.

One day years ago, while walking in the Crocus Hill neighborhood, I saw some teens push open a manhole cover from below and climb out onto the street. I don’t think they were the type to vandalize grates. They were explorers, apparently having navigated quite a distance, endangering only themselves.

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So far, no injuries have been reported because of a missing grate. We’re lucky. It should bother everybody that such a dangerous criminal act was even dreamed up. A missing grate might rank below gun play, car thefts, assaults, war, pestilence and muggings, but what could possibly be the point? It’s a foul that additionally cheapens the quality of life.

As for the streetlights, Kershaw said the copper wire thefts are diminishing. But there is better news. On Aug. 1, the theft of the copper wire will be classified as a felony.

“The repeat offenders,” Kershaw said, “have just cycled through the system.”

Meaning we don’t really punish anybody with enough consequences to make them think twice about spoiling what we gamely pass off as our civic tranquility. That changes on Aug. 1. It won’t be so easy to waltz right back to the street and fall into a sewer opening.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.