Should admission be charged at Portland Head Light?

Photo of the Day: Whaleback Light (Kittery, Maine) in a storm in January 2006

Earlier, I posted a photo of a wave clearing the top of Whaleback Lighthouse (about 70 feet) in an April 2006 storm. The waves weren't as high in this January 2006 storm, but the visibility was a bit better.

I'm still waiting for the ideal conditions for a great Whaleback wave shot -- high seas and clear, sunny weather.

For more on Whaleback, click here.

Photo of the Day: Fort Pickering Lighthouse, Massachusetts

This little cast-iron lighthouse on Winter Island in Salem can't be called impressive or spectacular, but it's a beautiful scene here at sunset. Just down the street from Winter Island is the old Salem Willows amusement park, where I spent many summer evenings as a kid.

For more on this lighthouse, click here.

Photo of the Day: Herrick Cove Lighthouse, NH

This is one of three wooden lighthouses built on New Hampshire's Lake Sunapee in the 1890s in an effort to improve the safety of steamboat travel. The builders were the Woodsum Brothers, who ran the steamships that traversed the lake in its heyday as a resort.

This photo was taken a few years before a 2003 restoration, when the lighthouse was lifted by helicopter off its base. When the tower was lifted it was dunked briefly in the lake, as it turned out it weighed more than had been expected. It was was quickly lifted to safety in the yard of Court Cross, chair of the Lake Sunapee Protection Association's lighthouse committee. The crib base was overhauled and the outer wooden panels of the lighthouse were replaced by maintenance-free panels.

Click here for a 2003 article.

Photo of the Day: Great Duck Island Lighthouse, Maine

I took this photo a few years ago when I visited Great Duck Island with some faculty and students from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. They own the light station and use it as a research station in the summer. Students monitor the bird population on the island, including the rare Leach's storm petrel.

Great Duck Island is about 9 miles offshore from Bar Harbor. We visited Mount Desert Rock Lighthouse, well over 20 miles offshore, on the same day. It was one of my most memorable lighthousing days ever.

Click here for more info on Great Duck Island.

Christmas at Lime Rock

Have you ever thought what it must be to spend a Christmas day in a lighthouse? For fifty years my Christmases have been there. To you landsmen and women, a snowy Christmas generally means that the day is complete; but to the lighthouse keeper it is too often ushered in by a northeast gale.

As far as the eye can reach under the light, I see nothing but the fast-driving flakes, while the sea dashes white on the rocks and is a visitor at my windows, knocking noisily every few minutes.

The wind shrieks through this old house, rushes through the lantern with a noise like the shrill whistle of a steamboat foretelling danger, and even around the doors there is a chorus as if an army of fiends were attacking us.

But with all this against is in the elements, in my girlish days we had many jolly Christmases, for we were a large family of boys and girls, and liked, just as I do today, the pleasant giving and receiving of gifts, which marks the birthday of Christ.

Now, with only my brother Rudolph left, we make the day as jovial as can be, and my dinner with its turkey and ‘fixings’ of celery and cranberry sauce, its mince-pies and plum-pudding, I should like to share with you all.

-- Ida Lewis, keeper of Lime Rock Lighthouse, Newport, Rhode Island, 1890

Photo of the Day: Aerial View of Boon Island Lighthouse, Maine

The writer Celia Thaxter called Boon Island "the forlornest place that can be imagined," and I wouldn't disagree. It's not pretty, but it has a fascinating history. The tower is now licensed to the American Lighthouse Foundation. Click here for more.