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Let There be Lighthouses
Story ran on: April 8, 2001
From the: Portsmouth Sunday Herald
Author: Nancy Cicco
Preservationist hold dear these treasures that dot our coastline
They are a majestic symbol of seafaring and an integral part of American history. They are a magnet for tourists and a well of romance and intrigue. One of them is even the logo of this newspaper. But when the U.S. Coast Guard began divesting itself of lighthouses in the early 1970’s, some the stoic structures lost their own safe harbor.
While some lighthouses remain in the care of the Coast Guard, more and more of them are being turned over to a hodgepodge of private organizations, towns, and state agencies. Most of these groups struggle to find the funds required to preserve their lighthouses. Lighthouse aficionado Timothy Harrison said recently that the condition of the 1,200 beacons that dot the nation’s coasts runs the gamut from stellar to disastrous. A local sampling proves no different.
In Maine, a measure of help is on the way. Earlier last month, Gov. Angus King signed a law that requires him and all future governors to set aside the third week in June as Lighthouse Week. The designation was made to allow “the people of the state to observe this week in suitable places and with appropriate ceremony and activity to honor and commemorate the important role of lighthouses in Maine’s history.”
The legislation will undoubtedly bolster the work of sponsor agencies charged with the care of area lighthouses. One such group is Harrison’s nonprofit American Lighthouse Foundation, based in Wells, Maine. The group cares for lighthouses across the country.
Formed in 1994, the agency’s mission is to save and preserve the history and heritage of America’s lighthouses, according to Harrison, the organization’s president.
Along with the foundation, Harrison has a hand in the for-profit Lighthouse Depot gift shop and Lighthouse Depot Museum, also on Route 1 in Wells. He as well is the editor of the for-profit Lighthouse Digest Magazine, which boasts the largest archive of lighthouses in the country, he said. The group can be found on the Internet at www.lighthousedepot.com.
Well-known to lighthouse enthusiasts, the enterprises are star players in the preservation of the beacons. But originally, Harrison envisioned the American Lighthouse Foundation would only provide help from the bench to other agencies charged with taking care of lighthouses.
Orphan beacons adopted
Once that happened, however, the foundation uncovered lighthouses nobody wanted. In 1995, when the Coast Guard gave up control of the Race Point Lighthouse on Cape Cod, no other state, local, or private group expressed interest in taking care of the beacon, either, Harrison said.
That scenario led the American Lighthouse Foundation to take the lighthouse under its wing. Since then, the group has adopted 13 other lighthouses across the country. He estimated caring for each lighthouse can run anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 a year. “We’ve taken some of them willingly and some of the unwillingly,” Harrison said.
Unwilling or not, the foundation has apparently won the respect of the Coast Guard. In many instances, the guard retains ownership of the lighthouses, but licenses the care of them to outside groups. As such, groups vying for those opportunities must win over the military branch brass.
“You have to approach the Coast Guard and prove that you can take care of that lighthouse. We have a track record with them,” Harrison said.
Corporate sponsors and private donors fuel the foundation’s work. About 70 percent of the foundation’s funds comes from private donors. “We’ve never been able to secure a grant,” Harrison said.
Locally, the foundation maintains guardianship over the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse in New Castle, N.H., and the Boon Island Lighthouse, which located in either York or Kittery, Maine¾depending on whom you ask. Care of both lighthouses is licensed to the foundation by the Coast Guard and both lighthouses are in very different conditions.
Shining a light on history
Lighthouses were first used as a navigational tool for sailors in about 650 B.C.E. “The Egyptians were the first ones to use lighthouses effectively,” Harrison said.
In Europe, some of the lighthouses still standing date to the 1600’s. In America, the first lighthouse, built in Boston Harbor, was destroyed by the British in the Revolutionary War.
One beacon that survived that conflict is Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse, in New Castle, N.H. Built in 1771, the beacon stood on what was then called Fort William and Mary.
One of the first overt acts of the Revolutionary War occurred at the fort in 1774, when Paul Revere rode from Boston to Portsmouth to warn the colonists that the British were coming to re-enforce the fort. Armed with that knowledge, the colonists overtook the fort and seized the gunpowder there. That gunpowder was later used at the battle of Bunker Hill. At the end of the war, the fort was renamed Fort Constitution, which became the first fort maintained by the newly formed U.S. government, according to Harrison.
The history of lighthouses in this country is as storied as a boat full of fishermen.
Keepers of the flame
In August 1789, the first Congress deemed all lighthouses would be cared for under a new government agency, the U.S. Lighthouse Service. After the agency’s formation, all lighthouse keepers were appointed by the president. The new agency maintained its own depots, manufacturing plants, inspectors and police force, Harrison said.
From then on, lighthouse keepers and many of their families lived in homes next to the beacons. Caring for a given lighthouse was a familial art, passed down through generations. Many times, the widows of male lighthouse keepers would be appointed to the job after their husbands died.
“In those days, women weren’t allowed to vote, but here they were appointed by the president of the United States,” Harrison said.
Sensing the country could not avoid involvement in World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt merged the U.S. Lighthouse Service into the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939. The merger automatically increased the Coast Guard’s ranks, but many lightkeepers saw the move as a hostile takeover. “There was a lot of animosity,” Harrison said. “For years afterward, (many lightkeepers) refused to wear the Coast Guard uniform.”
More than that, some lightkeepers started hoarding anything with the U.S. Lighthouse Service insignia. When FDR dissolved the agency, he ordered all artifacts marked U.S.L.H.S. destroyed. Some lighthouse families would have none of it and hid away U.S.L.H.S. oil cans, china, even toilet paper holders, Harrison said. He called those artifacts “extremely rare and valuable,” and one of the reasons he launched the Lighthouse Depot Museum.
By 1970, lighthouses became more expensive for the Coast Guard to maintain. Although the Guard still controls the lenses and fog horns on the lights, the military branch turned to outside agencies to provide the upkeep for the weather-worn structures and adjacent homes. Into the 1980’s, the automation of lighthouse beacons dispensed with the need for lighthouse keepers who lived on site, leaving the structures to sometimes fall into despair.
Harbor Lighthouse on register
Fortunately, this is not the case with the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The American Lighthouse Foundation took over for the Coast Guard in caring for the light about nine months ago and is in the process of forming a group that will be called the Friends of the Portsmouth Lighthouse. The coalition will work to keep the lighthouse in tip-top shape, Harrison said.
The beacon and lightkeeper’s house are in exceptional condition. “The only thing we’d like to do is restore the oil house,” Harrison said.
White Shoal Lighthouse
The same cannot be said for the state’s other oceanic lighthouse, White Island Lighthouse, on the Isles of Shoals. The state received the property in a federal transfer from Coast Guard in 1993, according to Johanna Lyons, a recreation resource specialist with the Department of Resources and Economic Development.
Tom Mansfield, a state architect who evaluated the lighthouse tower last year with a mason, said the tower has cracks in it.
“It’s got a serious structural masonry problem; that’s what we’re trying to solve out there,” he said.
He pegged the cost of repair work at about $210,000, just to fix the lighthouse tower, never mind the lightkeeper’s house.
Lyons is just beginning to identify funding sources that could help pay for the restoration project. “It has great importance to us,” she said of the lighthouse. “You can see it from anywhere on New Hampshire coast.”
Two positive developments on the island have Lyons hopeful. Currently, principals from Atlantic Aqua Sport in Rye host snorkeling classes on the island in the summer and watch over the lighthouse when they are there. And officials from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department and the New Hampshire Audubon Society are hosting a restoration project of their own on the island, as they attempt to re-establish a colony of terns there.
New Hampshire’s remaining three lighthouses are on Lake Sunapee, according to Harrison. By contrast, Maine has 68 lighthouses, and the largest concentration of the oldest lighthouses in the country, he said. Some of the lighthouses are faring better than others.
Cape Neddick Lighthouse
This lighthouse, built in 1879, is arguably the jewel in York, Maine’s crown. The lighthouse and accompanying lightkeeper’s home even have a prominent place in the town’s seal.
Commonly known as Nubble Light, the lighthouse and keeper’s quarters are on an island a short distance from the mainland. The lighthouse became the town’s property in 1998. Structures on the island and a public park on the mainland are now maintained by the York Parks and Recreation Department and its Sohier Park Committee.
Reportedly, the lighthouse is the most photographed and painted beacon in the country. Harrison supported that claim, as each year his organizations sponsor a lighthouse photography contest. “The ones that we get the most of are of Nubble Light and Portland Head Light,” he said.
A rendering of the Nubble may also be found somewhere among the stars. “A photo of Nubble Light was put in the capsule on the spacecraft Voyager that was launched in search of alien life,” Harrison said. Here on Earth, locals are mighty proud of the lighthouse. “I kind of watch the Nubble like it was my baby,” said Verna Rundlett, a member of the Sohier Park Committee. The committee will unveil a long-range plan for the lighthouse’s park to select-men next month, according to York Parks and Recreation Director Mike Sullivan.
Taxpayers don’t get socked for the $50,000 to $60,000 a year it costs to maintain the lighthouse, he said, because those costs are covered by $100,000 in annual profits generated by the nearby Sohier Park gift shop, he said. The lighthouse is in “great shape,” and is “something that’s really easy to fund raise for,” Sullivan said.
Lots of people also find it easy to get married the because the park is open to the public, according to Rundlett. “We’ve had four to six weddings on a Saturday,” she said.
Boon Island Lighthouse
It may be harder to get tourists to flock to Boon Island Lighthouse. The beacon sits on an island some six to eight miles from Maine’s coast.
The lighthouse is now licensed by the Coast Guard to the American Lighthouse Foundation. “There’s nothing out there except rock. It’s quite a dramatic structure,” Harrison said.
And a controversial one. Folks from York and Kittery have been arguing for years over which town should rightly claim the lighthouse. Although Rundlett said the tower is located in York, Elaine Peverly, a worker at the Kittery Historical and Naval Museum, said records of births, marriages and deaths on the island all place the lighthouse in Kittery.
That town gained the upper hand in the dispute in 1993. At that time, the Coast Guard removed the tower’s French-made Fresnel lens to replace it with a solar-power optic lens. The Fresnel lens was a collector’s item because the technology that produced the lens was destroyed in WWII, Harrison said. Both towns lobbied the Coast Guard for the opportunity to display the lens. Kittery won out, and the lens now resides at the Kittery Historical and Naval Museum.
But darker schemes existed on the island long ago. In 1710, the Nottingham Galley, a ship sailing from London, crashed on the island. Although all the men survived, their food among them, the men turned to cannibalism, Peverly said. The incident is the only case of cannibalism recorded in New England, according to Harrison.
Today, the lighthouse is in “pretty good shape,” mainly because its tower is made of granite, Harrison said. He expects in the coming year the foundation will spend an estimated $10,000 to refurbish the lightkeeper’s house and surronding structures.
Wood Island Lighthouse
This lighthouse, too, has its share of secrets, as it’s believed a ghost lives there. According to the “Insider’s Guide to Maine’s Southern Coast,” by Giselle A. Auger and Meadow Rue Merrill, the ghost is of a deputy sheriff killed by a resident lobsterman who then committed suicide in 1896.
Built in 1808, Wood Island Light is the oldest lighthouse in Maine. Located on an island off Biddeford Pool, the beacon is in the process of getting a face-lift, according to U.S. Coast Guard Senior Chief Tom Dutton of the South Portland Coast Guard Station. Before turning the guardianship of the light over to the Wood Island Lighthouse Society, the Coast Guard is converting the lighthouse’s beacon and fog apparatus so that both are run by solar power.
“The lighthouse is not going to run 24 hours a day, only at night time,” Dutton said. Vandals have damaged some of the buildings surrounding the light, but the Coast Guard plans to paint and shingle the boat house this summer.
Whaleback Ledge Lighthouse
As is true for the Boon Island Lighthouse, the true location of the beacon is sometimes difficult to determine. Although it sits in Portsmouth Harbor, the lighthouse is situated the closest to Kittery, Maine. The beacon, like the Wood Island Light, is still maintained by the Coast Guard, according to Dutton. Whaleback Light is the prototype for the Portsmouth Herald’s logo.
Like the Boon Island Light, the tower of the Whaleback Ledge Lighthouse is made of granite block. Physically in good condition, the beacon and surrounding buildings were updated about two years ago, Dutton said.
Locals and tourists can get an up-close-and personal look at the Whaleback Light and the region’s other beacons during a sunset tour hosted by the Isles of Shoals Steamship Co. Each Monday at 4 p.m. from June 18 through Labor Day, the company sets sail for a whirlwind, three-hour tour, which costs $25 for adults and $15 for children, according to Steamship Co. spokesperson Jen Hafner.
Date Entered into online database: April 11, 2001
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