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Lighthouses Up for Grabs
In 1991, fire struck the Heron Neck lighthouse on Greens Island, Maine. The Coast Guard set about to demolish the building, which like many similar structures along the coast had been replaced by automated aids to navigation and was no longer needed. Concerned citizens of nearby Vinalhaven Island asked Peter Ralston, vice president of the Rockland-based Island Institute, if it could save the nineteenth-century building.
Ralston soon discovered that it would take an act of Congress for his institute to acquire title to just the Heron Neck light, and achieved this. He also resolved to try for federal legislation that would enable the Coast Guard to transfer ownership of a broader selection of 36 Maine lighthouses—all federally declared as "excess property" and no longer fully maintained—to qualifying local groups willing to become their stewards.
With a strong boost from Maine politicians, the Maine Lights Program became law in 1996. So far, 28 lighthouses from Cape Neddick to West Quoddy Head have been approved for new ownership. Recipients include towns, citizen organizations, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the College of the Atlantic, which is already using its two new properties in its summer and research programs.
The legislation expires in October and it is too late for the Coast Guard to consider new applications for the transfer of ownership on this round. But the Island Institute hopes that lease arrangements or new acts of Congress will help preserve at least some of the eight remaining "orphans" included in the Maine Lights Program—as well as many other Maine lighthouses that were not part of this effort.
No other Atlantic Coast state has yet tried to develop a statewide lighthouse-saving program based on the Maine model. But, says a Coast Guard spokesman, "virtually every state along the Atlantic shoreline" has lighthouses that are no longer used but that have historic and cultural importance and could be transferred to local ownership. Help may be on the way. A bill entitled the National Historic Lighthouse Protection Act 1998 is currently wending its way through Congress. For the moment, says a Coast Guard spokesperson, the way to initiate discussions about a lighthouse lease or title transfer is to contact the aids to navigation office within the Coast Guard's nearest district office. Along the Atlantic coast, the locations and phone number of these are: Boston, (617) 223-8337; Portsmouth, VA, (757) 398-6673; Miami, (305) 536-5621. |
