When was portland head light built

Portland Head Light is a prized landmark for its historical significance, but also for the adjacent acre park that is its home, with stunning ocean views, hiking and walking paths dotted with viewing lenses, and other historic structures. The lighthouse, museum, and Fort Williams Park itself makes an enjoyable family outing spot with its many opportunities for exploring.

The history of Portland Head Light is told through exhibits displaying artifacts and documents, navigational aids, Fresnel lenses, models and photographs. A historical time line will guide your tour through the museum beginning with the origin of the lighthouse and the lives of the keepers, technology changes over the course of years, the military activities at Ft.

Williams and ending with the decommissioning and automation of Portland Head Light in The museum opened in Plan on one-hour for a visit to the Lighthouse, Museum and Gift Shop. A new Victorian two-family keeper's house was built in , on the same foundation as the one-story stone dwelling. The old stone house was reportedly moved to become a private home in Cape Cottage.

The lighthouse station has changed very little since that time, except for a renovation during which many of the tower's stones were replaced. In his book Portland and Vicinity, Edward H. Elwell reported that a few years earlier a party had gone to Portland Head to watch the crashing waves during a storm. Two carriage drivers who had brought the group out ventured too far out on the rocks and were swept away.

Their bodies were recovered several days later. Maguire ran ashore on the rocks at Portland Head. The Strouts got a ladder to the vessel and helped all aboard, including the captain's wife, make it safely to shore.

The Annie C. Maguire Museum at Portland Head Light. Click here for more on the wreck of the Annie C. For a time, the buildings at Portland Head Light received serious damage from practice gunfire from neighboring Fort Williams. Lighthouse Service Bulletin of September 1, , reported that "windows were forced out, finish ripped off, roof torn open," and also reported "injury to the brickwork of the three chimneys of the double dwelling.

Casings were installed to protect the chimneys. Frank O. Hilt became principal keeper in Hilt, who was originally from St. George, Maine, went to sea at a young age and eventually became the captain of the schooner Mary Langdon and other vessels. Beginning in , he served as an assistant keeper and then principal keeper at the isolated light station at Matinicus Rock.

Hilt Maine Lighthouse Museum. He succeeded Hilt as principal keeper in Right: Robert Thayer Sterling, principal keeper Courtesy of Maine Lighthouse Museum. Sterling, who retired in , declared Portland Head the most desirable of all light stations for keepers. On the first day of his retirement, Sterling fell in his yard and broke a rib.

As a result, he had to put his plans to attend some Boston Red Sox games on hold. Life at Portland Head Light was quite different from the popular image of the solitary lighthouse keeper. Constant tourists were a way of life. When Earle Benson was keeper in the s, a woman walked right into the keeper's house and sat at the kitchen table.

The woman insisted that Benson and his wife were government employees, and she demanded service. Electricity came to Portland Head Light in The light was dark for three years during World War II. The second-order Fresnel lens was removed in and replaced by aerobeacons. Severe weather has always plagued the station. In February , Coast Guardsman Robert Allen reported to the Maine Sunday Telegram that a storm had torn the fog bell from its house, ripped 80 feet of steel fence out of concrete and left the house a "foot deep in mud and flotsam, including starfish.

Left: Portland Head Light during the hurricane of September 21, On August 7, , a celebration was held at Portland Head Light commemorating the th anniversary of the creation of the Lighthouse Service. Visits to the Portland Head Light are not risky to tourists, and no dangers have been reported yet of tourism hurting the site. However, according to a Oakridge National Laboratory study in , climate change very much poses a threat here.

The study reports that Casco Bay, where the Portland Head Light is located, faces risks of rising sea levels, and salt water intrusion into its coastal aquifers and nearby wells used for drinking water.

Therefore, Portland Head Light faces many of the same challenges posed by climate-related weather events and sea level rises, as well as environmental pollution, that also threaten most other historic manmade and natural wonders along the coasts of all of the world's oceans. James Karuga April 25 in Travel. Phone: Website: summer. Phone: Website: www. Sailing with the public daily from Camden Harbor May through October.

Related Articles Filters. Revisit Quoddy Head. Reflection of Pemaquid. Pumpkin Island. Get inspired at the Maine Quarterly.