The littlest lighthouse keeper3/16/2023 On May 20, 1900, the color of the tower was changed from brown, a color it had been since at least 1892, to its current white daymark. The tower was painted red in 1878, but then by 1881, it was white. In 1876, the foundation for a forty-one-foot-tall iron tower was laid, as the stone tower was “unworthy of repairs.” This new iron tower is lined with brick and its exterior has been sported various colors over the years. A fog-bell tower was constructed in 1871 two hundred feet southeast of the lighthouse to house a fog bell that was tolled once every thirty seconds by a Stevens’s striking apparatus. This change altered the light’s characteristic from fixed white to fixed white varied every ninety seconds by a white flash. In 1855, when Keeper John McGuire was in charge, earning an annual salary of $250, a revolving fifth-order Fresnel lens replaced the array of lamps and reflectors. Lighting apparatus is clean and good, and the keeper is a good one.” The whole establishment is very leaky, the building being considerably cracked in heavy rains the floors are overflowed, and the rain drives through the walls. Although the keeper performed his duties well, a mere two years later an inspector found the facility in a terrible state: “Dwelling house is built of stone, and the tower is connected with the east end of it. Each lamp burned about forty-two gallons of oil annually. The light’s seven lamps and reflectors first shone in the spring of 1848 under the care of Zebediah Tucker. Lewis believed a light at Little River would prevent any additional fatal disasters caused my mariners mistaking these false harbors for Little River, which Lewis described as being “easy of access, sufficiently capacious for a large fleet, and …secure from all winds.”Ĭongress appropriated $5,000 in March 1847 to build a conical, twenty-three-and-half-foot-tall stone tower with an attached keeper’s house on the sixteen-acre island at the entrance to the harbor. Lewis noted, “There is no place on the coast of Maine where a light would be so truly serviceable as upon the island at the entrance of this harbor, a small beacon light being alone required.” No usable harbor exists between Little River and West Quoddy, but there are two considerable indents, known as Moose Cove and Baylie’s Mistake, both of which are lined with reefs, and most unsafe to enter. The history of Little River Lighthouse at Cutler, Maine began in 1842 when I.W. “Little River Lighthouse was once listed as one of Maine’s Ten Most Endangered Historic Properties by Maine Preservation and many said it could never be saved, but it was saved, thanks to the generosity and help of a whole lot of people,” said Kathleen Finnegan, Secretary of Friends of Little River Lighthouse, a Chapter of the American Lighthouse Foundation. Little River Lighthouse is a case in point. Coast Guard, to present day volunteers that preserve the properties and their histories for future generations. From the daily sacrifices of keepers and their families both under the Lighthouse Service and U.S. Lighthouse history is marked by sacrifice.
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