The Gay Head Lighthouse Committee wants you to join in to help save the lighthouse and the committee is getting creative. Or rather, the time is for you to get creative and be a part of the lighthouse poetry project.
The idea is straightforward — write a poem about the Gay Head Lighthouse. Stroll your memories for moments spent with the lighthouse. Go back in time or stay with the precarious present moment when erosion threatens the future of the light.
The U.S. Coast Guard has abandoned plans to modernize the optic at the Gay Head Light and will instead maintain the current sweeping beam.
Lieut. Matthew Stuck of the Coast Guard aids to navigation branch said Monday that the Coast Guard has found a replacement optic for the current aging lens at the light. The replacement will likely happen sometime in the next few months.
“We plan to acquire the replacement and install it for the failing rotating beacon,” Mr. Stuck said. “Our hope is to maintain it for the indefinite future.”
If you save this date you may just help save the Gay Head Lighthouse. The Keep on Shining campaign to relocate and restore the lighthouse will kick off Friday, June 21, with a community open house and solstice celebration.
The Vineyard community will always have a strong love affair with its four lighthouses. Nearly all of the local ones are still standing, though some have been moved. All but one of the lighthouse keeper houses, though, are no longer with us. Automation ended the era of climbing the stairs to the top of the tower each afternoon to light the beacon.
How, when and where to move the Gay Head Light, along with the money to pay for it: these are all active topics for discussion by a newly-formed committee charged with developing a plan to relocate the historic brick tower.
The lighthouse now stands 50 feet from an eroding cliff at the westernmost edge of the Vineyard.
A 12-member committee appointed by the town selectmen last month held its first meeting Wednesday, which was mostly organizational.
The Vineyard's outermost lighthouse is celebrating a birthday. The Cape Pogue Lighthouse on Chappaquiddick is 200 years old, and for most of those years it has stood as a constant and reliable sentinel for ships making passage across the sometimes treacherous waters of Nantucket Sound.
People love lighthouses. When you enter the word into Google's
search engine, 44,800,000 sites pop up. There are lighthouse magazines,
magnets and sweatshirts. The New England region even has its own fan
group dedicated to the structure - New England Lighthouse Lovers.
"Lighthouses are modern day castles," said Craig Dripps,
president of the East Chop Association. "They have a sense of
magic and history. They hold secrets."
They stand tall and straight on the horizon, an enduring symbol of the Island’s long and rich maritime history. Viewed from a distance, the Edgartown and East Chop lighthouses convey a sense of strength and of purpose.
Until recently, however, closer looks would have inspired less appreciation.
In the nineteen eighties, the Coast Guard stopped funding the maintenance of the lighthouses. Soon time and weather took their toll on the old cast-iron structures.
Two of the Island’s century-old lighthouses are undergoing significant restoration.
The East Chop Lighthouse in Oak Bluffs now shines with a fresh coat of white paint after having been refurbished inside and out at a cost of $140,000. The Edgartown Light is only weeks away from being completed at a cost of $250,000.
The restoration is a milestone and benefit for both Island towns, according to Matthew Stackpole, executive director of Martha’s Vineyard Museum.
Martha’s Vineyard is privileged to have five lighthouses on its shores and a sixth at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum campus in Edgartown. Two more afar can be seen from the Island, sometimes even more at night.
This weekend all the Island’s lighthouses will be celebrated in what is being called the Martha’s Vineyard Lighthouse Challenge. Visitors from around the country who make a habit of visiting lighthouses are making a special trip to the Island to share their affection for these centuries old beacons of the waterfront night.
