New England's West Coast

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In the 1800s, Lake Champlain became a major shipping route after the establishment of canals connecting it to the Hudson River, the Great Lakes, and north to the St. Lawrence River. Burlington grew into the third-largest lumber port in the nation.

Burlington's harbor was ideally situated, but it was exposed to strong winds. In an effort to protect the harbor, a granite breakwater was constructed beginning in the 1830s. By 1896, the breakwater reached 4,200 feet in length.

In 1857, navigational lights were added to the north and south ends of the breakwater. The small lighthouses were moved and rebuilt multiple times as the breakwater was expanded, and a middle light was added for a time beginning in 1890. The wooden towers were plagued by ice, fire and wind; the north light burned in 1870, and in 1876 the south light was knocked over in a storm.

The lights were attended by keepers, who lived nearby and reached the towers by boat – a dicey proposition in rough weather. A keeper's residence was added to the breakwater in 1875 and remained for about a decade, but it was never used. It was finally sold and moved to a neighborhood in Burlington, where it still remains as a private residence.

One evening in 1938, 75 people in 12 boats escorted Keeper Rolla W. Hill back to shore on his last night of manually lighting the lights. Automatic operation of the lights began the next night, and eventually all the lights on the breakwater were replaced by modern steel skeleton towers.

The breakwater, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, has been rehabilitated in recent years. $250,000 in funding was secured with Senator Patrick Leahy's help, and a piece of history was brought back with the construction of new wooden lighthouses. The designers used photographic evidence to create a set of plans, representing two different time periods. The smaller south light tower is circa 1857, and the larger north light tower is circa 1890.

The new wooden structures were built by Atlantic Mechanical, Inc. of Wiscasset, Maine under contract to the U.S. Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit in Providence, Rhode Island. The lighthouses represent the culmination of two decades of improvements to the waterfront.

For more history on this light see Lighthouse.cc 

Watch for Jeremy D'Entremont’s book The Lighthouses of New Hampshire and Vermont, coming in 2008.

Copyright 2007 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.