Episodes

Ida Lewis was featured on the cover of Harper’s Weekly in July 1869 Ida Lewis, born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1842, became one of the most celebrated lighthouse keepers in American history. Her father, Hosea Lewis, was appointed the first keeper of the Lime Rock Light Station in Newport Harbor in 1853, and Ida learned to care for the light as a teenager. Hosea Lewis suffered a paralyzing stroke in 1857. From that time, young Ida was essentially the keeper, although she didn’t get the official...

Timothy Mount and Lynne Macco live in the Adirondack region of New York, but they have spent a good part of their lives going back to 2008 serving as volunteer caretakers at lighthouses in far flung corners of the earth. Lynne is a retired physician, and Tim is a professor emeritus of music at Stony Brook University. Both of them are also experienced boat captains. Lynne Macco and Timothy Mount at Seguin Island Light Station in Maine Their caretaking experience began with three months at Maine’...

Jeremy D’Entremont at Gay Head Lighthouse on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Bob Trapani, Jr., at Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse in Maine. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. In this second of a two-part interview with Light Hearted host Jeremy D’Entremont, guest interviewer Bob Trapani asks Jeremy about his decades of experiences in the world of lighthouse preservation, and about humorous and scary experiences in the course of visiting remote lighthouse locations. Bob and Jeremy also discuss the chang...

In this episode, the tables are turned on U.S Lighthouse Society historian and Light Hearted host Jeremy D’Entremont as he is interviewed by his friend Bob Trapani, executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation. This is part one of two parts. Among the subjects discussed are Jeremy’s nearly 40 years researching, writing about, and photographing lighthouses, as well as his work in the field of lighthouse preservation. Jeremy D’Entremont aboard the clipper ship Cutty Sark in Greenwich,...

Grand Manan is a Canadian island in the Bay of Fundy, about seven miles east of West Quoddy Head in Lubec, Maine. Swallowtail Lighthouse was built on a peninsula at the northeastern corner of the island in response to a number of shipwrecks. The lighthouse began service in 1860 and is one of the oldest wooden lighthouses still in operation. The light station was automated and destaffed in the 1980s. In 2012, the property was turned over to the Village of Grand Manan. A community group called the...

Kraig Anderson Kraig Anderson is the owner and webmaster of one of the most popular lighthouse-related websites on the internet, lighthousefriends.com. Kraig grew up in the landlocked state of Utah and didn’t move to a state with lighthouses until he attended graduate school at the University of California Santa Barbara. After earning his PhD in 1995, he worked for a few years at a high-tech company in the Bay Area, and it was while on an extended assignment from this job to the Raleigh/Durham a...

Clare Island is at the entrance to Clew Bay, off Ireland’s western Atlantic coast. It’s the largest of Clew Bay’s 365 islands, only six of which are inhabited year-round. It rises to a height of 1520 feet and is an important breeding ground for seabirds. The family of the legendary pirate queen Grace O’Malley owned the island during the Middle Ages, and many of the O’Malley clan are buried at an abbey on the south side of the island. Clare Island Light Station, Ireland. Photos courtesy of Sherr...

The town of Newport on the central Oregon coast is home to two picturesque lighthouses, at Yaquina Head and Yaquina Bay. Yaquina Bay Lighthouse, a pretty two-story dwelling with an attached square wooden tower, began service in November 1871. It’s believed to be the oldest building in Newport and it’s the only surviving wooden lighthouse built by the federal government in Oregon. A short time later, less than four miles to the north, another lighthouse was built at Yaquina Head. A powerful first...

In 1990, Goat Island Light Station, at the entrance to Cape Porpoise Harbor in southern Maine, became one of the last light stations in the country to be automated and destaffed. After automation, the island became the property of the nonprofit Kennebunkport Conservation Trust. Goat Island Light Station, photo by Jeremy D’Entremont A project to rebuild the station’s fog bell tower and the covered walkway between the tower and keeper’s house was completed in the fall of 2011. The station’s fog b...

Cape Porpoise is a small coastal village in the town of Kennebunkport, Maine. More than a dozen islands protect the deep, sheltered harbor at Cape Porpoise, and it grew into a busy center for fishing and lobstering. Goat Island Light Station, Maine. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Goat Island Light Station was established in 1833 to help guide mariners into the harbor. A 20-foot stone tower and dwelling were built, and John Lord of Kennebunk became the first keeper at a salary of $350 per year. In...

The Florida reef lights date back to 1852 when Carysfort Reef Lighthouse was completed under the direction of Lt. George Meade of the Army Corps of Engineers. Sombrero Key Lighthouse was built a few years later, and then Alligator Reef was built as the third of the reef lights in 1873. Alligator Reef Lighthouse is about four nautical miles offshore from the village of Islamorada. The reef is named for the U.S. Navy schooner Alligator, which was launched at Boston in 1820. Alligator Reef Lightho...

Point Cabrillo is in Northern California, about midway between San Francisco and the border with Oregon. In 1908 an octagonal lighthouse tower was built with an integral fog signal building in an attractive building that’s built of local redwood and Douglas fir. Three dwellings were also erected for the keepers and their families. The lantern was fitted with a third-order Fresnel lens created by Chance Brothers of England. It’s one of only three British-built lenses still in use in the United St...

From December 21 through 26, 2022, an historic extratropical bomb cyclone brought blizzard conditions and winter storms to much of Canada and the United States, killing at least 71 people and cancelling or delaying more than 10,000 flights during the busy Christmas travel season. The storm was unofficially named Winter Storm Elliott by The Weather Channel. Meanwhile, a separate storm moved into the Pacific Northwest on December 23. The storm knocked out power for more than 30,000 people in Washi...

Bakers Island Light Station is off the coast of Salem, Massachusetts, a few miles north of Boston. The station was established in 1798 and the lighthouse tower that stands today was built in 1820. The 10-acre site is owned by the Essex National Heritage Commission, also known as Essex Heritage, a non-profit organization that manages and oversees the unique heritage resources of the Essex National Heritage Area. During the summer season, Essex Heritage offers public tours to the light station by ...

News of the week December 30, 2022 Historic Portland Head (ME) lighthouse extensively damaged in last week’s storm The waves from Friday’s storm crashed over Fort Williams Park’s rocks and smashed into the lighthouse, causing extensive damage. Portland Head, ME – J. Candace Clifford The Portland Head Light museum’s front room has damage to the counter, register and carpeting from the water. Click here to read more * * * Photos: Frozen Lake Michigan lighthouse is breathtakingly beautiful (esp...

Borden Flats Lighthouse in 1900, from the U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office. Borden Flats Lighthouse was built in 1881 on a dangerous reef to help guide increased shipping traffic as the city of Fall River, Massachusetts, became an important center for textile manufacturing. In fact, the city grew to become the largest textile producing center in the United States during the 1800s, with over 100 mills in operation by 1920. Borden Flats Lighthouse is a cast-iron tower on a cylindrical caisson –...

The city of Fall River, Massachusetts, situated where the Taunton River flows into Mount Hope Bay, was famed as the “Textile Capital of the World” in the nineteenth century. A lighthouse was established on Borden Flats at the mouth of the Taunton River in 1881. It took the form of a cast-iron tower on a caisson base, with a fixed red light 47 feet above mean high water. The structure was battered in the hurricane of September 21, 1938, and a new, much wider cylindrical caisson was added around t...

Emma Choi The guests in this episode are the hosts of their own highly successful podcasts. Emma Choi is a comic and writer and host of the weekly short-form comedy National Public Radio podcast Everyone & Their Mom. In 2021, Emma joined the NPR program Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! as an intern. She worked with the Wait Wait team to create the podcast Everyone & Their Mom, which began airing in February 2022. Emma is set to graduate from Harvard University in 2023 with a major in English and, she ...

According to an old Native American legend, there was a giant devil who caused much mayhem in a region that included parts of what is now Westchester County and the Bronx, New York, and portions of southeastern Connecticut. The giant was chased from the area by warriors, but he threw huge rocks at them across Long Island Sound. Some of the boulders landed in the sound and he used them as stepping stones to make an escape. Early maps noted the reefs in Long Island Sound as the “Devil’s Stepping S...

The port of San Luis, California, developed into a major shipping point in the 1870s. A lighthouse at Point San Luis began operation on June 30, 1890. The beautiful Victorian building consists of a square wooden tower attached to a keeper’s dwelling. The Point San Luis Lighthouse Keepers, a dedicated group of preservationists established in 1995, spearheaded a 15-year restoration effort that led to the lighthouse being opened to the public. Docent-led tours are available year-round. Point San L...

The Light Hearted podcast was launched in June 2019 to serve as a place for the exchange of information and ideas about lighthouses in the United States and around the world. Since then, there have been 200 numbered episodes, plus more than a dozen “special editions.” This episode celebrates episode 200 with comments from many guests who have appeared on the podcast previously. Many guests from past episodes contributed messages for this special 200th episode. Cindy Johnson Michelle Jewell Sha...

Armand Houde was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1927. He served in the U.S. Navy on the USS Gage and took part in the Battle of Iwo Jima, receiving a WWII Victory Medal, American Theatre Ribbon, and Asiatic Pacific Area Ribbon with Star, and various other medals. Houde continued in the Coast Guard after World War II and served at several shore stations and on several vessels, including the Handkerchief Shoal Lightship, before coming to Portland Head Light Station in Cape Elizabeth, Maine....

Four light stations were established on Maine’s Kennebec River in 1898, on the approach to the busy shipbuilding center of Bath. The keeper’s house at one of the stations, Doubling Point, was sold to a private owner in 1935. The house has been owned for many years by Jim and Joyce Spencer, who also spearheaded the formation of the nonprofit Friends of Doubling Point Light in the late 1990s. The front range light of the Kennebec River (Doubling Point) Range Lights, photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. I...

November 4, 2022 This is a special bonus episode of Light Hearted. The subject is a new play called A Safe Passage, being performed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from November 4 through November 13. The play, which is definitely of interest to lighthouse fans, is presented by Glass Dove Productions at the Players Ring Theatre in Portsmouth. The Players Ring Theatre is located at Prescott Park on the waterfront of Portsmouth. Since 1992, it’s been a center for the production of new and original...