For years, local historians believed the 30-foot Lighthouse Tower at Mayo Beach in Wellfleet Harbor, Cape Cod was destroyed. Yet, recent research indicates the information from an archived photo revealed the Tower was stored in Coast Guard surplus and reused as the iron Tower of Point Montara Lighthouse in California.
Local historians were surprised by [...]
After serving 39 years at Nantucket Shoals, Nantucket Lightship LV-112 has been bounced around New England and New York exchanging ownership seven times like a Yankee privateer ship escaping a British sea hunt (2).
In 1936, the British government paid $300,956 to build the largest American Lightship after their SS Olympic White Star liner sank the [...]
Photo by Chris Mills
For over 60-years, the 36-inch diameter Double Drum rotating DCB-36 Aerobeacon replaced most of the Glowing Eyes of American Lighthouses. Since the mid 1940s, the large Fresnel lenses, manufactured using hundreds of handmade polished prisms, were replaced by more efficient and less costly aerobeacons.
With new advances in technology, the DCB-36 Aerobeacon [...]
The prison Lighthouse was inspired by the California Gold Rush of 1848! In five years, the bay was jammed packed and jelly tight with vessels loaded with fortune seekers hoping to land a good fortune! The Lighthouse of the Rock was the first working Lighthouse on the Pacific coast and beamed [...]
Franks Island Lighthouse was designed by the Benjamin Henry Latrobe, a renowned architect and engineer of famous historical buildings, as a monumental Lighthouse to mark the entrance to the Mississippi River for President Thomas Jefferson, who had recently acquired the Louisiana Territory.
Unfortunately, Latrobe’s Lighthouse tower and colonnade collapsed shortly before completion in 1820. Despite [...]