Portland, which was known as Falmouth until 1786, was America's sixth busiest port by the 1790s. Even so, Maine had no lighthouses when 74 merchants petitioned the Massachusetts government (Maine was part of Massachusetts at the time) in 1784 for a light to mark the entrance to Portland Harbor. The deaths of two people in a 1787 shipwreck at Bangs (now Cushing) Island near Portland Head finally led to the appropriation of $750 for a lighthouse. The project was delayed by insufficient funds, and construction didn't progress until 1790 when Congress appropriated an additional $1,500, after the nation's lighthouses had been ceded to the federal government. The stone lighthouse was built by local masons Jonathan Bryant and John Nichols. The original plan was for a 58-foot tower, but when it was realized that the light would be blocked from the south it was decided to make the tower 72 feet in height instead. Bryant resigned over the change, and Nichols finished the lighthouse in January 1791. President George Washington appointed Capt. Joseph Greenleaf, a Revolutionary War veteran, to be the first keeper. At first, Greenleaf received no salary as keeper; his payment was the right to fish and farm and to live in the keeper's house. In 1793, officials decided to pay Greenleaf an annual salary of $160. The keeper died of a stroke in his boat on the Fore River two years later. By 1810, the lighthouse and keeper's house were in poor condition; the woodwork was damp and rotting. Part of the problem was that the keeper was storing a year's supply of oil in one room, putting great stress on the floor. Repairs were made, and an outdoor oil shed was added. In 1813, a new lantern and a system of lamps and reflectors designed by Winslow Lewis were installed at a cost of $2,100. A new keeper's house was built in 1816.
New lamps and reflectors were installed in 1850. in the following year, an inspection found much to be desired. The new reflectors were found to be badly scratched already. The house was leaky and cracking and the tower was being undermined by rats. The keeper was apparently poorly trained and had received no written instructions on the operation of the light. He had been forced to hire a man himself to train him for two days.
In his 1935 book Lighthouses of the Maine Coast and the Men Who Keep Them, Robert Thayer Sterling called Joseph Strout "one of the most popular lightkeepers of his day or any yet to come. His genial disposition, his hearty laugh, together with his good stories of the sea, won him the admiration of all who met him." A parrot named Billy was a well-known member of the Strout household at Portland Head for many years. When bad weather approached, Billy would tell Keeper Strout, "Joe, let's start the horn. It's foggy!" Billy reportedly became an avid fan of radio in his declining years and lived to be over 80. With the completion of Halfway Rock Light in 1871, the Lighthouse Board felt that Portland Head Light had become less important. The tower was shortened by 20 feet in 1883 and the second-order lens was replaced by a weaker fourth-order lens.
This met with many complaints. A year later, the tower was restored to its former height and a second-order lens was again installed, first lighted January 15, 1885. A new Victorian two-family keeper's house was built in 1891, on the same foundation as the 1816 one-story stone dwelling. The old stone house was reportedly moved to become a private home in Cape Cottage. The lighthouse station has changed very little since that time, except for a 1900 renovation during which many of the tower's stones were replaced. In his 1876 book Portland and Vicinity, Edward H. Elwell reported that a few years earlier a party had gone to Portland Head to watch the crashing waves during a storm. Two carriage drivers who had brought the group out ventured too far out on the rocks and were swept away. Their bodies were recovered several days later.
For a time, the buildings at Portland Head Light received serious damage from practice gunfire from neighboring Fort Williams. The U.S. Lighthouse Service Bulletin of September 1, 1916, reported that "windows were forced out, finish ripped off, roof torn open," and also reported "injury to the brickwork of the three chimneys of the double dwelling." On one occasion two of the chimneys were completely severed at the bottom. Casings were installed to protect the chimneys. Life at Portland Head Light was quite different from the popular image of the solitary lighthouse keeper. Constant tourists were a way of life. When Earle Benson was keeper in the 1950s, a woman walked right into the keeper's house and sat at the kitchen table. The woman insisted that Benson and his wife were government employees, and she demanded service. The last civilian keeper before the Coast Guard took over was Robert Thayer Sterling, author of Lighthouses of the Maine Coast and the Men Who Keep Them. Sterling, who retired in 1946, called Portland Head the most desirable of all lighthouse stations for keepers.
On August 7, 1989, a celebration was held at Portland Head Light commemorating the 200th anniversary of the creation of the Lighthouse Service. The day also marked the automation of Portland Head Light and the removal of the Coast Guard keepers. Maine Senator George Mitchell, Congressman Joseph Brennan and lighthouse historian F. Ross Holland spoke at the celebration while the Nantucket Lightship (click to hear the lightship's foghorn followed by Portland Head Light's fog signal) paraded offshore with a flotilla of Coast Guard vessels. Rear Admiral Richard Rybacki, the Coast Guard's First District commander, said in his address to the crowd, "I can think of nothing more noble. The lighthouse symbolizes all that is good in mankind. We are not here to celebrate an ending. We are here to immortalize a tradition." The Museum at Portland Head Light opened in the former keeper's house in 1992. The museum focuses on the history of the lighthouse and nearby Fort Williams. Among the displays are the tower's old seven-foot second order lens and a fifth order lens from Squirrel Point. A garage was converted into a gift shop that now does about $500,000 worth of business yearly. (Note: The lighthouse tower is not open to the public.) In October 1993, the property was deeded to the Town of Cape Elizabeth.
Keepers: Joseph K. Greenleaf (1791-1795); David Duncan (1796); Barzillai Delano (1796-1820); Joshua Freeman (1820-1840); Richard Lee (1840-1849); John F. Watts (1849-1853); John W. Coolidge (1853-1854); James S. Williams (1854); James Delano (1854-1861); Elder M. Jordan (1861-1869); Joshua F. Strout (1869-1904); Mary Strout (assistant, 1869-1877); Joseph W. Strout (assistant 1877-1904, principal keeper 1904-1928); John W. Cameron (assistant 1904-1928, principal keeper 1928-1929); Frank. O. Hilt (1929-1944); Robert Thayer Sterling, (assistant 1928-1944, principal keeper 1944-1946); Archie McLaughlin (Coast Guard, c. 1946); William L. Lockhart (Coast Guard 1946-1950); William T. Burns (Coast Guard, 1950-1956?); Earle E. Benson (Coast Guard, 1952-?); Edward Frank (Coast Guard 1956-?); Weston B. Gamage Jr. (Coast Guard, c. early 1960s); Armand Hood (Coast Guard officer in charge, c. 1963); Walter Dodge (Coast Guard, 1963); Thomas Reed (Coast Guard, 1966-1967); Robert Allen (Coast Guard, c. 1972); Kenneth A. Perry (Coast Guard, ?); Roy Cavanaugh (Coast Guard, c. 1971-1977); Jerry Poliskey (Coast Guard, c. 1977); Davis Simpson (Coast Guard, ?-1989), Nathan Wasserstrom (Coast Guard, ?-1989) |
