One of my favorite ‘things’ to visit is lighthouses. My love of these historic, navigational lights goes back many years when, as a child, my family visited Maine. The lighthouse that I remember the most from that trip is Pemaquid Point. Many years later, we took our children on a family vacation to Maine and visited this same lighthouse. It was commissioned in 1827 by President John Quincy Adams. It was originally lit with candles, then eventually a Fresnel lens was installed.*
A favorite local lighthouse, located in Rochester, New York (our home town), on the shores of Lake Ontario, is the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse. The 40-foot stone tower building is in the shape of an octagon and is open to the public, as is the keeper’s dwelling that houses a gift shop and museum. It is part of the Seaway Trail, a National Scenic Byway. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a City of Rochester Landmark.* Check out the picture in the Gallery to the right of this post. The original stone tower is my favorite, however, it was lime-washed a couple of years ago. Personally, I love the original tower.
Through the years, I’ve seen countless lighthouses around the country and overseas. I wish I could name them all! Our most recent lighthouse road trip took us around the Chesapeake Bay area, including Baltimore, where there is a lightship in the harbor. An upcoming Fall cruise will take us up the eastern coast to Boston, Portland, St. John and Halifax. Halifax is well known for Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse, which we visited several years ago. Portland Head is a well-photographed lighthouse that we will also be visiting, along with a few others in the Casco Bay area. On our Alaska cruise, we posted a map on the wall, so we could identify the lighthouses as we cruised by. We spent time in Seattle after the cruise lighthouse hunting. We also posted a map on the wall for our Trans-Atlantic cruise so we could find and name lighthouses as we entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. When we lived in Florida, we took road trips to scout out the lighthouses on the East coast and Gulf coast. Karen has climbed the steps to many a lighthouse and reveled in capturing the view from the tower in photographs.
Lighthouses come in all shapes and sizes, on shore, on cliffs, on derricks and more. There’s also a lesser known group of 25 lighthouses in Arizona. Lighthouses in Arizona? Yes! These are scaled-down replicas of actual United States lighthouses, located around Lake Havasu and are fully functional. Most are available to drive up to so the mobility challenge to see them is rated as ‘easy’. We followed a local map and found and photographed most of them.
Someday, I hope to get to the Michigan peninsula area to see their lighthouses around Lake Huron. It will be a fly and drive trip. There are some pretty impressive lighthouses from the pictures I’ve seen. Now I need to see them up close and personal! Check out this webpage to see why I want to visit this area, preferably in the Fall season – unitedstateslighthouses.com
Trivia Tidbit: “As per the coast guard’s navigational regulations, lighthouses on the west coast use a green beacon, while east coast lighthouses use a red beacon. Lighthouses with a flashing amber beacon signify safe harbor lights for emergency use only.”**
Today, many lighthouses have been decommissioned; some are privately owned. There are lighthouses open to the public seasonally, including the grounds and keeper’s lodging and out-buildings. Some lighthouses have been turned into bed and breakfast inns. And yet others allow interested folks to be lighthouse keepers for a few days. And, believe it or not, there are some lighthouses for sale.
If you are looking for lighthouses to visit, an excellent source for more information on historical lighthouses and light stations is the National Park Service website at www.nps.gov.
*Information obtained from wikipedia
**Information obtained from Lake Havasu website – https://www.golakehavasu.com/lighthouses
Twenty Steps at a Time 