Light Hearted

White Shoal Lighthouse, USLHS photo by Chad Kaiser. White Shoal Lighthouse is twenty miles west of the Mackinac Bridge and Mackinaw City at the northeast end of Lake Michigan. Work on the lighthouse began in the spring of 1908. The crib foundation was built using 400,000 square feet of timber, 3700 cubic yards of concrete, and 4000 tons of rock. The lantern originally held a bivalve second-order F...

On March 3, 1821, Congress appropriated $10,500 for three lighthouses on the Maine coast, one of them on five-acre Burnt Island at the west side of the entrance to Boothbay Harbor. In 1988, the station was automated and destaffed. A decade later, Burnt Island Light Station was transferred to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. Elaine Jones, education director for the department since 1991, w...

Graves Lighthouse; photo by Jeremy D’Entremont This is the second part of a two-part interview with Dave and Lynn Waller, owners of Graves Lighthouse in outer Boston Harbor, a classic wave-swept granite tower on a barren, rocky ledge. One of the subjects discussed is the “Franklens” created by Dave Waller and friends — a first-order Fresnel lens made of spare panels from va...

Graves Lighthouse is a classic, granite, wave-swept offshore lighthouse tower on a barren ledge in outer Boston Harbor. It went into service in 1905 with a huge first-order Fresnel lens from Paris, rotating on 400 pounds of mercury, produced a light that was later upgraded to 3.2 million candlepower– it was for many years the most powerful light in New England. It was staffed with resident k...

The Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard is a great destination for anyone who’s interested in lighthouses. There are five lighthouses on the island, including Cape Poge Light on Chappaquiddick, an island that’s connected to Martha’s Vineyard. And the Martha’s Vineyard Museum in Vineyard Haven has the first-order Fresnel lens from Gay Head Lighthouse on display. Richard Skidmore talking...

Gay Head Lighthouse stands in one of the most picturesque locations in New England, on top of the 130-foot-tall multicolored clay cliffs at the western edge of the island of Martha’s Vineyard, just south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The Town of Aquinnah took ownership of the lighthouse in February 2015. As of that month, the Save the Gay Head Light Committee had raised $2.5 million toward i...

In last week’s episode of Light Hearted we spoke with Skip Sherwood, the director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s lighthouse passport program, and with Scott Walbert, who is one of the volunteers who coordinates the program. In this episode we meet four of the Hall of Fame Lighthouse Passport stamp collectors. First is James Hill of Winter Park, Florida, a deputy sheriff with the Seminole C...

The U.S. Lighthouse Society’s Lighthouse Passport Program provides enthusiasts the opportunity to help preserve lighthouses as well as a wonderful way to keep a pictorial history of their lighthouse adventures. Small donations are made by passport holders for the stamps. The lighthouse passports can be bought through the U.S. Lighthouse Society website and at many participating locations. Sk...

Oak Island Lighthouse went into service in 1958 near the mouth of the Cape Fear River in southeastern North Carolina. It’s been owned by the Town of Caswell Beach since 2004, and it’s managed by the nonprofit Friends of Oak Island Lighthouse . From 1958 to 1962, Oak Island Lighthouse had the brightest navigational light in the United States. It was the next to last lighthouse constructed in the Un...

Tawas Point Lighthouse, located in Tawas Point State Park in Baldwin Township in Northern Michigan, is an attraction for maritime buffs and also a destination for birdwatchers, with spectacular views over Lake Huron and Tawas Bay. Visitors enjoy the view from Tawas Point Lighthouse. Courtesy of Tyler Leipprandt and Michigan Sky Media. The brick tower is 70 feet tall. The State of Michigan acquired...

J. Candace Clifford From the time it was founded in 1984, the United States Lighthouse Society has maintained an Archive of lighthouse data including photos, documents, and many other items pertaining to lighthouses, lightships, and related subjects. Starting in 2016, J. Candace Clifford , the Society’s Historian, and Tom Tag, the Society’s Technical Advisor, began researching ways of making the A...

Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse is the last screwpile cottage-style light station in its original location in Chesapeake Bay. It’s located about a mile and a half offshore from the nearest point of land in Annapolis, Maryland. The City of Annapolis owns the lighthouse, and the Chesapeake Chapter of the U.S. Lighthouse Society manages it. The Annapolis Maritime Museum serves as the departure point fo...

Lighthouse tenders were ships that were specifically designed to maintain, support, or tend to lighthouses or lightships by providing supplies, fuel, mail, and transportation. The tender Lilac was launched in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1933. Lilac in 1939. U.S. Lighthouse Society archives Nearly 175 feet long, Lilac was equipped with a steam-powered boom that could lift buoys weighing 14 tons or mor...

Peter Gellatly Peter Gellatly is a lecturer in accounting and administration at the Coatbridge campus of New College Lanarkshire in Scotland. About 25 years ago he saw a lighthouse on his way to the Isle of Man, and he was mesmerized. He has photographed many lighthouses on his travels over the years, and more recently he has built up a lighthouse memorabilia collection ranging from uniforms to a...

The United States Lighthouse podcast Light Hearted was launched in June 2019 as the only podcast completely devoted to lighthouses and their history, preservation, and lore. This marks the fiftieth episode, not counting a few “special editions.” To mark this milestone, this episode is different than most. Rather than featuring an interview with a guest from the lighthouse world, this e...

Katie Brydon greeting visitors at Burnt Island. Courtesy of Maine Department of Marine Resources. Katie Brydon and husband Jesse Gauthier at Burnt Island. Courtesy of Maine Department of Marine Resources. Living history performances are utilized at many museums and lighthouses, but few light stations have utilized the concept of living history to the extent that Burnt Island Light Station in Booth...

Ida Lewis; U.S. Lighthouse Society archive February 25 is the birthday of a woman who is arguably the most famous lighthouse keeper in American history — Ida Lewis of Lime Rock in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island. She was born in Newport on February 25, 1842. And to celebrate Ida Lewis’s birthday, the guest in this episode of Light Hearted is Lenore Skomal, author of one of the best books ever w...

Moose Peak Lighthouse, photo by Jeremy D’Entremont This episode of Light Hearted featured an interview with the owners of one of the most rugged and remote lighthouses in New England. Congress authorized the building of a lighthouse on the east point of 30-acre Mistake Island, about five miles offshore from Jonesport, Maine, in March 1825. The station was established in October 1826. A 24-fo...

(Use the player at the bottom of the page to hear the podcast) There are many creative ways to raise money for lighthouse preservation, and the two interview subjects in this episode of Light Hearted have found one of the most creative. Alison Richardson, a summer resident of Isle au Haut in Maine, and Molly Siegel, an Island Institute fellow on the island, decided to do something special to help...

Windmill Point Lighthouse, Vermont. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Lake Champlain, bordering New York, Vermont and Quebec, was once a bustling waterway. More than ten lighthouses were built on the lake in the nineteenth century, on the New York and Vermont sides. A light was established at Isle La Motte, at the northern end of the lake, about 1829 – actually a lantern placed in an upper...

Joseph Smith as Augustin Fresnel at Montauk Lighthouse, New York, in 2018. Photo by Donna Dimino. Joseph Smith has been a theatrical performer based in New York City since 1995. He decided to take his love of acting and his love of history and to bring them together as a performing artist of living history. His passion is to create excitement and curiosity about history by giving voice to stories...

Fred Mikkelsen speaking at a symposium in Kittery, Maine, in 2016.. Frederick Mikkelsen was a Coast Guard light keeper at Conimicut Lighthouse in Rhode Island circa 1958 to 1961. The cast-iron “sparkplug” style lighthouse was built at the mouth of the Providence River in 1883. Conimicut was the one of the last lighthouses in the nation to be converted to electricity. The light was auto...

East Point Lighthouse, U.S. Lighthouse Society archive East Point Lighthouse began service in September 1849. It’s a type of building known as a Cape Cod-style lighthouse, because a number of them were build on Cape Cod in the early 1800s. It consists of a lantern on the roof of a two-story keeper’s dwelling. The light was automated in 1911 with the use of an acetylene gas system. The light was da...

Ernie DeRaps at Monhegan Lighthouse in 2007. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. This is a special edition of Light Hearted , featuring an extended interview with a former lighthouse keeper. Ernie DeRaps, a native Mainer, spent several years in the 1950s and ‘60s as a Coast Guard lighthouse keeper at four Maine lighthouses – Monhegan, Fort Point, Heron Neck, and Browns Head. After retirement he too...

St. Marks Light Station in April 2018; U.S. Lighthouse Society photo by Jeff Gales. St. Marks is a small city on Florida’s gulf coast that’s part of the Tallahassee metropolitan area. It was founded by the Spanish in the 1600s. St. Marks became an important port of entry for the prosperous planting region of Middle Florida and South Georgia. A light station at St, Marks, Florida’s second, be...