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Long Island Head Light

Boston, US

Long Island Head Light

Long Island Head Light is an historic lighthouse on Long Island in Boston Harbor, Boston, Massachusetts. The current brick tower is the fourth lighthouse on the island. The light was first established in 1819, largely as a result of a study conducted by the Boston Marine Society, which had built the

daybeacon on Nixes Mate 14 years earlier. It was a 20-foot (6.1 m) stone tower known as "Inner Harbor Light". It was the second of the four Boston lights—103 years after Boston Light, but ten years before the first daybeacon at the site of Deer Island Light, and before The Graves Light, built in 1905. In 1853, it was reported in the New England Farmer, that Captain Charles A. Beck, was keeper of the Light for twenty-eight years. The stone tower fell into disrepair and was replaced by one of the earliest cast iron lighthouse structures, thirty-four feet tall (pictured below). In 1857, a fourth order Fresnel lens replaced the lamps and reflectors which had been in place. During the next twenty years it sustained damage in a number of storms. In 1881, it was replaced again, by a conical cast iron structure and a new wood keeper's house. Fort Strong was significantly enlarged around the start...

Listen to the audio guide for Long Island Head Light Free on WIP — starts by itself when you arrive, even with the screen off

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