Last year for the week including the 4th of July Independence Day celebration, I provided two pictures of different lighthouses with fireworks displays in the background. This time I'm doing the same thing, but with one featured lighthouse.
This week's featured lighthouse is the Marblehead Neck Light, at Marblehead, Massachusetts. It's not the prettiest, most creative, or most picturesque lighthouse in the world. In fact, it's quite utilitarian. But it's in a notable location. Marblehead is on the coast northeast of Boston and east of Salem.
So, as one might expect, it has a long history. Here's the Lighthouse Friends page for it:
Marblehead Lighthouse
Here's an excerpt with some details about the current brown tower.
"Instead of the proposed brick tower, a 100-foot-tall, pyramidal, iron skeleton tower, to be manufactured by Chamblin, Delaney, and Scott of Richmond, Virginia, was approved for Marblehead in 1895. This design, which had been used elsewhere in the country, was likely selected due to its cost of just $8,786 versus the $45,000 estimate for a brick tower. A temporary wooden tower exhibited a light at Marblehead while the iron tower was assembled on the site of the original lighthouse, which had been demolished to make way for its successor. The new tower, the only one of its kind in New England, first exhibited its light on April 17, 1896.Here's a couple of pictures of the lighthouse in daylight:
The core of the tower is an iron cylinder that houses a 127-step spiral staircase that leads to the landing below the lantern room, while eight cast-iron pilings, seated atop concrete foundation disks and connected by a network of braces, provide the necessary support. A covered way linked the new tower to the keeper’s dwelling. A brick oil house was added to the station in 1907."
And here are three pictures of the lighted lighthouse with the bright lights of fireworks behind it:
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