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Written by Jeremy D'Entremont
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Nantucket, MA
Est. 1746, present light built 1901
26 feet high
This is America's second oldest lighthouse station (after Boston Light, 1716)
and the tower has been moved and rebuilt more times than any other.
Jeremy’s Lighthouse Guide #42
The present lighthouse is the ninth at Brant Point. The little tower is seen
by many thousands of people each year as they enter and leave Nantucket on ferries
from the mainland.
By the 1740s Nantucket's whaling industry was growing fast. At a town meeting
in January 1746, the merchants and mariners voted to erect a lighthouse to mark
the point around which all vessels must pass as they enter the island's inner
harbor. Three men were assigned the duty of building the structure. The first
wooden lighthouse burned down in 1757, probably the result of an oil fire.
 The second light was destroyed in a storm in March 1774. A third Brant Point
Light was paid for by a tax on shipping coming into the area. In 1783 the lighthouse
burned down again. The next light was no more than a lantern hoisted up between
two spars; that structure burned down in 1786. The fifth lighthouse lasted only
two years before it was destroyed by a storm. The next lighthouse, built by the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1788, was ceded to the federal government in
1795.
By the 1820s over 200 Nantucket whaling ships were in service and a new, more
efficient lighthouse was called for. The new structure built in 1825 was a tower
on top of the keeper's house.
In 1856, yet another Brant Point Light was built for $15,000, this time a 47-foot
brick tower and keeper's house. This lighthouse still stands, west of the present
Brant Point Light, minus its lantern room. Because of shifts in the channel the
1856 lighthouse was discontinued and the present tower was built east of the previous
one in 1901.
In the fall of 2000 the Coast Guard and Campbell Construction Group completed
an overhaul of the lighthouse. The six-week project entailed removing the lead
paint from the lantern and replacing all the lantern glass, reshingling the tower,
repainting the entire structure, and replacing the interior stucco work. The long
tradition of arriving at Nantucket by "coming 'round Brant Point" seems destined
to continue well into the future.
For lots more HISTORY of this lighthouse visit Lighthouse.cc
Copyright 2005 by Jeremy D'Entremont,New England Lighthouses
Photos are the property of the author and may not be used without permission.
Photos above from Jeremy D'Entremont. |
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