Lighthouse of the Week, May 3-9, 2020: Great Point, Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA

When it comes to lighthouses, they don't come much simpler than the Great Point Lighthouse on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts (also known as Nantucket Light, for fairly obvious reasons).  It's a plain white conical tower all alone on a sandy spit of land -- if you want to see where, click here. I included the southern side of Cape Cod and also Martha's Vineyard to make it easier to visualize.

So, yes, it's quite simple.  But I don't know when it was built or how tall it is, so let's find that out.

Here's the New England Lighthouses page on it:  Great Point Lighthouse

Intriguingly, it was destroyed in 1984 and rebuilt in 1986.  I'll see if there's a story to that.

Established: 1784
Automated: 1950s
Destroyed: 1984, rebuilt 1986
Construction materials: Concrete and plastic Tower height: 60 feet
Height of focal plane: 71 feet
Earlier optic: Third-order Fresnel lens
Present optic: VRB-25, solar powered

OK, over to the Lighthouse Directory, and there IS a story to the destruction.  The keeper's house burned down in 1966, but a nor'easter destroyed the lighthouse in 1984. It was rebuilt in 1986.   According to the Directory:

"The original lighthouse, a wood tower, burned under somewhat suspicious circumstances in 1816. The 1818 lighthouse was destroyed by a nor'easter in March 1984; it was rebuilt at a cost of more than $2 million appropriated by Congress. The late Senator Edward Kennedy raised the flag at the dedication of the new lighthouse in September 1986. Stone from the original lighthouse was used in the facing for the new tower."

Also noted here, the original Fresnel lens is now at the Nantucket Shipwreck and Lifesaving Museum.  There's a picture of it here, in a page on the history of the Great Point Lighthouse (also from New England Lighthouses).

So, there are lots of pictures.  I selected a few, and also a video.  The panorama is by Katherine Gendreau.