Lighthouse News

Lubec Channel Lighthouse, near the northeasternmost point of the United States in Maine, went on the auction block on July 20, with no bids so far. Opening bid is $10,000 dollars, and unlike Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse, where the current offer stands at $35,000, there appears to be no one bidding after nine days of the auction.

You’re a small island country, your Coast Guard no longer maintains the automated twenty-one lighthouses scattered around your archipelago, and you don’t want to rely on foreign grants to maintain these historic beacons, so what do you do? Create an Adopt-A-Lighthouse program, where corporate or private individuals enter into an agreement with the Coast Guard for use of the property in exchange for fixing it up. Sounds like a good deal? That’s what the Phillipines government is doing to try to preserve their maritime heritage.

According to a story in the Asian Journal online, the following are the lighthouses in the Phillipines, relics of the past in need of care and restoration:

PETA Applies To Take Ownership of Penfield Reef Lighthouse; Seeks National HQ For Its Fish Empathy Project

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Press Release:

For Immediate Release:
July 19, 2007

Contact:
Matt Prescott 757-622-7382

Norfolk, Va. - Yesterday, PETA sent a letter to Saundra A. Robbins of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) expressing interest in acquiring the Penfield Reef Lighthouse located in Black Rock Harbor offshore of Fairfield Beach and Bridgeport which the group plans to convert into the national headquarters of its Fish Empathy Project. Wednesday was the final day that the GSA would consider applications by nonprofit organizations and other qualified entities to take ownership of the 51-foot-high granite-and-wood landmark free of charge under the Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000.

Taking a tip from several other cities that have done this, the Little Point Sable Lighthouse Seekers, in conjunction with the Hart, Silver Lake, Mears Chamber of Commerce have had local artists create twelve “Guiding Lights,” which are six and a half feet tall lighthouse replicas. These lights are on display at participating businesses throughout Oceana County through September, when they will be auctioned to the highest bidder. Bids can be placed at each lighthouse, with minimum amounts of $125 USD.

The lighthouse that graces Connecticut’s special license plate has been excessed by the Coast Guard. According to a story in the New Haven Register today, the Old Saybrook Lighthouse, a sparkplug style light that survived the 1938 hurricane, will be offered to municipal entities and non-profit organizations as soon as some issues are cleared up, including access. The lighthouse is only accessible through a private road, with no parking signs. Only property owners are allowed to enter. The other way, of course, is by boat. The lighthouse is at the end of a dangerous breakwater, about a mile out.

Whaleback Ledge Lighthouse, offshore of Kittery, Maine is being excessed by the Coast Guard. Currently it is leased for maintenance to the American Lighthouse Foundation, but Tim Harrison, ALF President, states the ALF cannot take on the lighthouse due to lack of funding.
“It’s surely a(n) historic building, but as much as we say we’d like to save every lighthouse, we can’t because we’re a nonprofit,” he said. “We don’t get government funding and are only funded through donations and we’re at a point in history where it’s difficult for a nonprofit to maintain a lighthouse on the water without help from outside agencies.”
If no other non-profit or municipal organization steps up to the plate, it will be put up for auction by the General Services Administration.

An historic lighthouse is going up on the auction block by the General Services Administration’s Office of Real Property Disposal. Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse, located three miles offshore of Bowers Beach in Delaware Bay, will be auctioned online beginning July 16, 2007. Minimum bid is $10,000 USD and bidding will be in $5,000 USD increments. There will be one property inspection on August 1, and you must be a registered bidder to sign up for it.

Penfield Reef Lighthouse, near the entrance to Black Harbor, Long Island Sound in Fairfield, Connecticut, was declared excess property earlier this year by the Coast Guard. It joins over 20 other lighthouses that have been given away by the NPS for one dollar, except this one is a little different. For that one dollar, you get a lighthouse built with granite on a reef, with a two story home of the Second Empire architectural style, and your very own ghost.

I posted the story July 7 on my other site, hauntedlights.com, and the next day the Connecticut Post ran a story on it, which was picked up by the Associated Press.

Various bits of lighthouse news from around the internet…

Would you like to be by the sea?

An eighteenth century former lighthouse keeper’s home is for sale in Norfolk, UK, according to an article from the Eastern Daily Press. The home is one of two that sandwich the red and white lighthouse tower at Happisburgh. Built in 1791, it has two double bedrooms, a sitting room with fireplace, kitchen-dining room and bathroom, with a large cellar containing a games, study and storage areas. It comes furnished, and is listed at £247,500. Its only drawback is that in one hundred years, three quarters of the land between the lighthouse and the sea may be swallowed up due to erosion.