West Quoddy Head Lighthouse Facts

Years Built: 1857-1858
Third Lighthouse in the location (first lasted from 1808-1831; second lasted from 1831-1858)
Still Active: Yes
Activated: August 14, 1858
Latitude: 44.8149     Longitude: -66.9508

Day Markings: Fifteen red and white horizontal bands(eight red, seven white)
Type Of Lamp: Third order Fresnel lens
Signal: Non-rotating flash that runs 24 hours a day.
Light Signal Sequence: Flashes 2 seconds on, 2 seconds off, 2 seconds on, 9 seconds off.
Height Of Lighthouse: 49 feet
Height Of Lighthouse Above Sea Level: 89 feet (The 49-foot tall light stands on a 40-foot cliff)
Focal Point Height Above Sea Level: 83 feet
Light Visibility: 13 to 15 nautical miles (15 to 18 statute miles) out to sea
Foghorn Signal Sequence: A foghorn compliments the light with a unique signal that consists of a 2-second blast, 2 seconds silence, another 2-second blast, and 24 seconds silence.
Public Accessibility: The keeper’s quarters open to public in late May and close mid-October. The Coast Guard opens the light tower to the public twice a year (once in July and once in September), but is otherwise closed to the public.

Official Website: http://www.westquoddy.com

Introduction

The Easternmost Point in the United States (not counting U.S. territories) has the irony of being named West Quoddy Head. West Quoddy Head stands on a small, leaf-shaped peninsula that juts out of the mainland, most of which is now Quoddy Head State Park (established 1962). The West Quoddy Head Lighthouse stands on this Easternmost Point of United States mainland.

The word “Quoddy” refers to the Passamaquoddy Indian Nation, who had been native to the area prior to European conquest. The closest town to West Quoddy Head is Lubec, Maine (population 1,652). Lubec is situated on another peninsula the lies 3.25 miles to the northwest by water (10 miles by road), and has the distinction of being the Easternmost Town in the United States.

Throughout its life, the current West Quoddy Head has had Fifteen Red And White Horizontal Stripes as its day markings. But there was a brief period when it had thirteen, corresponding with the thirteen red and white stripes of the United States flag. Why was it changed back to fifteen? Read on to find out…

Locals refer to West Quoddy Head and the town of Lubec as “The Beginning of America.” Americans from other parts of the United States tend to unconsciously think of Maine as the northeast corner of the world. Political maps of the United States and even modern GPS systems seem to make this out to be the case. However, a closer look at the terrain around West Quoddy Head shows that it is anything but the end of the world. The landmass visible to the north of the lighthouse is Campobello Island, which belongs to New Brunswick. Campobello Island is home to Head Harbour Lighthouse, which is also known as East Quoddy Head Lighthouse and is painted with a red cross with a white background in contrast to West Quoddy Head’s unmistakably American stripes. Visible across the water to the east of West Quoddy Head is Grand Manan Island and the neighboring White Head Islands, which also belong to New Brunswick. Continue eastward across the Bay of Fundy, and you will reach Nova Scotia.

West Quoddy Head became an "Easternmost Extreme" as a result of the United States' compromises with England regarding Northeastern territory lines in the early 1800's. The United States, being the weaker country at the time, was in somewhat less of a position to bargain, but were determined to hold their own. Britain responded with something along the lines of, “OK, you can have that area, but not an island more! And we’re holding on to the sea rights around Maine, by the way…” In fact, the Fifteen Red and White Stripes painted on the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse are more than just a decoration. They are a Statement of Ownership from a determined young country staking out their territory in the face of the mother country from which they had just gained independence.

Although the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse is a territorial statement to England, it was also a territorial statement to another group of people that caused an internal threat to the nascent country, and that group was smugglers. The small United States Government did not yet require an income tax, but it had to collect money to function, and one of its areas of revenue was from tariffs on imports. With West Quoddy Head being so far in the outer reaches of the new nation’s borders, it was a favorite place for smugglers to bring in goods off the radar from the U.S. Revenue Marine (later to become the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service),the pre-Coast Guard agency that policed the waters around the United States for smugglers.

Yet another problem was Sail Rock, a small land formation that protrudes from the water just to the east of West Quoddy Head (and which makes Sail Rock the Real Easternmost Point of the 50 United States). The small stretch of coast around West Quoddy Head also hides numerous underwater crags, which lie in wait to tear apart unsuspecting ships that come too close to the shoreline. According to one 19th century lighthouse keeper, the sum total of these ship hazards took approximately a ship a year, and occasionally cost lives as well.

These concerns caused six prominent citizens in the area to petition then president Thomas Jefferson in 1806 to put a lighthouse in the area. The U.S. Government responded quickly, and on February 10, 1807, Congress authorizied the construction of what would be the first West Quoddy Head Lighthouse.

Two Cheap Lighthouses

The Lighthouse Bill of 1789 required that when lighthouses were built, the land the lighthouse would stand on and the land immediately surrounding the lighthouse must be ceded to the United States, so in 1807, the State of Massachusetts (which Maine was a part of at the time) ceded 100 acres on West Quoddy Head to the Federal Government to build the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse. Contractors Benjamin Beal and Duncan W. Thaxter were contracted to build the first West Quoddy Head Lighthouse and its accompanying keepers’ quarters. The lighthouse building was finished in 1808, and would be the first of three lighthouses to illuminate the area. The lighthouse was a wooden octagonal towerand was painted white. The keepers’ quarters was a 17’ x 26’ house split into three rooms: a parlor, a kitchen, and a bedroom.

As with many of America’s early lighthouses, the building did not hold up well, and in March 1830, a mere 12 years after it had been built, Congress authorized the building of a replacement lighthouse. The building of the second West Quoddy Head Lighthouse was contracted out to Joseph Berry, built of rubblestone over the course of 1830-1831, and lit on August 1, 1831. Like its predecessor, the second lighthouse was also painted white. The lighthouse was fitted with 10 Lewis Lamps, which the U.S. Lighthouse Service was using in all of its lighthouses at the time. This lighthouse had a focal plane of 90 feet above sea level, and was visible 17-21 miles out to sea in clear weather.

Another ten years passed, and by then both the new lighthouse and the 1808 keepers’ quarters were falling apart. Reportedly, the rubblestone in the lighthouse was laid so poorly that the inside of the tower would be coated with ice from the leaking of water in the wintertime. The house was leaking badly as well.

The sorry condition of the second West Quoddy Head Lighthouse was unfortunately very typical of American lighthouses at the time, and this was only confirmed when Congress conducted an investigation of the U.S. lighthouse system in 1851. The five-member panel who conducted the investigation returned with a 700-page report that stated officially what mariners had been saying for years: that the American lighthouse system was cheap, inadequate, and unreliable. The ramshackle quality of America’s lighthouse system was making America look pathetic in the eyes of other nations, and was unnecessarily costing ships and lives. The United States government got the message, and did an about face in their lighthouse building agenda. Instead of building lighthouses cheaply as they had before, they would opt for high quality, sturdy lighthouses that would be designed to last for centuries to come. So one by one, the U.S. Lighthouse Service began replacing their cheap, ramshackle lighthouses with expensive, here-to-stay lighthouses.

West Quoddy Head’s turn for an upgrade came onAugust 16, 1856, when Congress authorized the third (and current) West Quoddy Head Lighthouse. The current West Quoddy Head Lighthouse was designed and built by The Army Crops of Engineers. The lighthouse building was made of brick, and was built 25 feet to the northwest of the second light tower on a level that would be more visible at sea. Construction began in 1857 and was completed in 1858, with a new keepers’ quarters and a boilerhouse being built concurrently with the lighthouse. This time the lighthouse was painted with its distinctive fifteen horizontal red and white bands (eight red, seven white). A third order Fresnel lens was installed in light tower when the building was constructed. The finished West Quoddy Head Lighthouse was lit on August 14,1858, and, with some minor exceptions, the lighthouse has remained lit ever since, and even still uses its original third order Fresnel lens.

Having a lighthouse on West Quoddy Head was only helpful about half the time. The native environment is one where frigid air often meets relatively warm waters. This collision of temperatures produces thick, heavy fog, which often shrouds West Quoddy Head for days at a time. The fog is so persistent that it is typical for West Quoddy Head to have fog one hundred days out of a year.

Finding a fog signal that worked properly for the area turned out to be more troublesome than keeping a sturdy lighthouse. Without the modern science of acoustics to aid them, the Lighthouse Service found themselves searching the most effective fog signal mechanism through trial and error. The light station would go through eleven different fog signals in the search for one that worked well for the lighthouse. From 1808 to 1820 the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse dealt with the fog via the use of a cannon. The ship that made the most trips past the lighthouse at the time was a ferry that went from Maine to St. John, New Brunswick. It would sound its whistle if it came by in the fog, and if the light keeper could hear the whistle, he would fire the cannon repeatedly as the ferry passed by.

In May of 1820, Congress approved of the addition of a fog bell on the lighthouse grounds, which was added later that year. Between 1820 and 1838, West Quoddy Head had been through four different fog bells, which were:

• A 500 lb. bell,
• A 241 lb. bell with a higher-pitched ring,
• A gigantic 1,545 lb. bell, and
• A 14 ½-foot long steel triangle, which was essentially a large version of the marching band instrument or an old-fashioned dinner bell.

All four of these bells were hand rung, and were not only relatively inadequate to break through the fog, they kept the light keeper occupied enough that in 1826, Congress authorized a raise for the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse keeper to reimburse him for the trouble of tending both the bell and the lighthouse, and included back pay for the previous years of tolling the fog bell.

Complaints from mariners regarding not being able to hear the fog signal and concern about the dilapidated state of the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse prompted Congress to approve the transferal of the fog signal to Sail Rock and the building of a new lighthouse there. Although this was authorized, the Lighthouse Service never went through with either of these changes. However, in 1838, they did replace the big triangle “dinner bell” with a 1,000-pound mechanically rung bell that they hoped would remedy the problem. This bell could be rung by hand or by machine, but apparently the hammer apparatus that rang the bell mechanically did not work well, and therefore the bell could not be heard unless it was rung by hand.

In 1852, a Jones fog bell and its corresponding tower replaced this mechanical bell. A Jones fog bell featured a bell atop a platform that rang automatically with the assistance of hanging weights. The entire system worked in the same way a grandfather clock does, with descending weights that would trip hammers to ring the bell as they fell. These weights would then be cranked back to the top once they had reached the ground. One of the earliest wurviving photos of West Quoddy head Lighthouse features the Jones fog bell tower in the photograph.

By the 1860’s, the air horn had developed well enough that the Lighthouse Service decided to switch from bell systems to air horns. West Quoddy Head's first air horn was a hot air trumpet that was installed in 1866, but would only be in use for three years. The Lighthouse Service replaced the air trumpet with a locomotive steam whistle in 1869. This ninth attempt at a fog signal had the most staying power of any of the signals that went before it, as the steam whistle served West Quoddy Head for nearly forty years. In fact, the next improvement came not with the signal itself, but with the boiler room which provided the steam that powered it. The boilerhouse was enlarged in 1887 from its original size of 14’ x 26’ to the 26’ x 32’ building that it is today.

In 1903, a Canadian firm began marketing the diaphone, a fog signal powered on compressed air, which replaced the steam whistle and became the next generation in fog signals. West Quoddy Head quickly adopted the diaphone and used it until the 1930’s when a modern electric foghorn replaced it. The electric foghorn is the eleventh and (to date) final development in West Quoddy Head’s chronology of fog signals, and is still used at West Quoddy Head to this day.

The West Quoddy Head Lighthouse itself has led a quiet, peaceful life since it was built in 1858. The light remained on and working through the Civil War and through World Wars I and II. The only time the light was ever off for an extended period of time was in the summer of 2002, when the Coast Guard replaced the roof of the lighthouse due to cumulative deterioration.This required the light to be off for two months while the renovations were taking place.

However, there is a story that one of the former keepers tells about the light being shut off inadvertently by the Delco Electronics Corporation. Apparently, sometime in the early 1960’s, Delco was filming an advertisement for their car batteries, and approached the West Quoddy Head light keeper of the time about the possibility of turning the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse off and then on for use in the ad, so as to give the illusion of a Delco car battery “jump starting” the lighthouse. The response was a definite “no”, but apparently while some of the film crew were talking to the light keeper, some other crafty crew members had gotten to the switch and threw it with the cameras rolling, so they got their “jump start” shot without the light keeper knowing about it until after the fact.

Over the years, the light station has seen its share of renovations and upgrades. As mentioned previously, the boilerhouse was enlarged from its original dimensions of 14’ x 26’ to the 26’ x 32’ building it is now in 1887. An oil house was added in 1892, and was built a short distance away from the rest of the light station for safety reasons. In 1899, the keepers’ quarters, which had been shared by a keeper and an assistant keeper as early as the 1850’s, was renovated into a duplex for two families, complete with two new kitchens added for each side of the duplex.

As with all lighthouses, the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse initially ran on whale oil, which was replaced by lard oil in the 1860’s, which was replaced by kerosene circa 1880. According to the Maine State Museum, the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse switched over to electricity in 1932, apparently being powered by an on-site electric generator. Prior to this, the West Quoddy Head light was a stationary light, and it went to being a flashing light (as it is today) when it was electrified. In the 1970’s or early 1980’s, the Coast Guard added an emergency airport-light strobe, which juts up from the side of the lamphouse. This emergency light turns on and flashes if the lamp in the Fresnel lens ever malfunctions.

In 1939, the U.S. Lighthouse Service was absorbed into the U.S. Coast Guard. At that time, Coast Guard personnel replaced civilian light keepers, although the designated Coast Guard keeper and his family continued to live on the premises of the light station just as the civilian light keepers did.

During the time that the Coast Guard owned and maintained the West Quoddy Head property, the lighthouse experienced a couple of odd mishaps. In the 1960’s, the lighthouse was repainted with thirteen stripes—seven red alternating with six white—instead of its usual fifteen. Apparently the painters assumed that the lighthouse had been painted wrong and tried to correct the number of stripes to coincide with the thirteen red and white stripes of the U.S. flag. However, when the Coast Guard learned about this well-meaning act of patriotism, they made the painters change it back to its historical fifteen red and white stripes because nautical charts officially list the lighthouse as having fifteen horizontal bands. A decade later, in the 1970’s, the Coast Guard veneered the lighthouse with two courses of bricks. The only problem was that the bricks the Coast Guard used for this veneering were glazed with a glossy finish, and therefore paint would not stick to the bricks. The Coast Guard then had to sandblast the entire lighthouse tower in order for the paint to stick.

The lighthouse was finally automated on June 30, 1988, which brought its days of on-site keepers to an end. The Coast Guard still owns and maintains the light, Fresnel lens, and lamphouse, but at the time the light was automated, the tower and surrounding property were deeded to the State of Maine, who incorporated it into Quoddy Head Sate Park.

One of the functions of lighthouses is to warn against ship hazards that lay in wait for mariners. However, sometimes accidents happen despite these warnings or due to other issues the lighthouse cannot cover. It was for this reason that in 1871, the United States Treasury started the U.S. Life-Saving Service, a federal rescue service whose Life-Saving Stations often stood nearby many of America’s lighthouses. The West Quoddy Head station has the distinction of being both the USLSS Station #1, First District, and the U.S. Coast Guard Station #1.

In 1874, the United States Life-Saving Service (which would later be absorbed into the U.S. Coast Guard) started expanding into Maine and adding life-saving stations there. The West Quoddy Life-Saving Station was built that same year on a small strip of beach called Carrying Place Cove, which is situated on the south side of the “stem” on the leaf-shaped West Quoddy Peninsula, about a mile and a half away from the lighthouse. The idea of putting the Life-Saving Station on this narrow “stem” of land was to give the surfmen manning the station access to both sides of the peninsula. However, what looked good on paper didn’t work as well in reality. The peninsula had a low vantage point, which made it difficult to scout for ships in distress. The necessity of crossing an isthmus made of peat moss also took its toll, especially at low tide, which would expose clam-flats that the surfmen would have to trudge through after having fought their way through the already difficult-to-traverse peat bog.

In 1888, the Treasury Department purchased land with a slightly higher vantage point that was situated on the northwest side of the West Quoddy Peninsula about three-quarters of a mile from the lighthouse. But it was not until the U.S. Life-Saving Service was absorbed into the newly formed U.S. Coast Guard nearly thirty years later that they would actually relocate there. The replacement Coast Guard Station was built on the new property, and the old Life-Saving Station on Carrying Place Cove was promptly abandoned.

The new Coast Guard Stationwas built in 1917 and remained active until 1970. The Coast Guard added improved launching facilities for the boats on the site in 1916, and in 1918 they added a lookout tower. A large boathouse was then added in the 1930’s, and a maintenance building was added circa 1951. The station continued to operate until July 15, 1970, when the Coast Guard shut the station down. The property was deeded to the State of Maine for education purposes in 1974.

Even though the West Quoddy Head State Park was already in existence when the State of Maine received the deed to the property, strangely enough the lifesaving station grounds didn’t become annexed to the State Park. The site changed hands several times before ending up in the hands of a private owner, who fully restored the 1917 Coast Guard Station building, along with its still surviving boathouse and maintenance building, in 2003. The former Coast Guard Station now serves as a vacation rental property.

West Quoddy Head Lighthouse had been federal property until 1988, when the light was automated. At this point, the light tower and surrounding property was deeded to State of Maine, although the Coast Guard continues to own and maintain the aids of navigation at the top of the lighthouse (i.e. the lamphouse, light, and Fresnel lens). The State of Maine annexed the light station into West Quoddy Head State Park and began looking for a local organization that would assist in keeping a visitors’ center and in maintaining the grounds. The state originally approached the Town of Lubec, who passed on the offer. However, an independently owned medical facility that serves the area took an interest, and planted the seeds of a community organization in 1994 to address the need. The organization grew into what is now known as the West Quoddy Head Light Keepers’ Association, Inc.; it was incorporated as a separate entity in 1999, and received non-profit tax-exempt status in 2002.

The State mandated that the West Quoddy Head Light Station have a manned visitors’ center that would be free of charge to visitors. The only place for a visitors’ center was the former keepers’ quarters, which had fallen into serious disrepair. The building was stripped to the studs and completely renovated, a process that lasted from 2000 to 2002. By late May 2002, the 1858 keepers’ quarters opened to the public as a renovated Visitors’ Center and Museum.

Under the direction of the West Quoddy Head Light Keepers’ Association, the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse has become a very charming and welcoming combination of international notoriety and small town Americana. The Association opens the visitors’ center on Memorial Day Weekend (the last weekend of May) and closes it in approximately the second week of October. Over 18,000 visitors sign the guestbook in that four and a half month period every year. These guests have represented all fifty U.S. states, every Canadian province and territory, and 79 nations of the world so far.

In July 2005, a granite marker designating West Quoddy Head as the Easternmost Point in the United States was added to the light station’s lawn. The marker has become something of a tourist attraction in and of itself. Beneath the marker lies a time capsule to be opened on July 30, 2058, fifty-three years after the dedication of the marker and two hundred years after the construction of the current lighthouse and keepers’ quarters.

The Association uses the iconic status of the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse to benefit local businesses and artists, some of whom receive as much as half of their business revenues from the tourists who visit the lighthouse. And although the lighthouse itself has to remain closed to the public due to the Coast Guard’s ownership of the aids to navigation, twice a year the Coast Guard opens the lighthouse to visitors. The first opening of the lighthouse to the public takes place in July during the Association’s Anniversary Celebration of the opening of the visitor center. The second takes place in September for an event called the Lighthouse Challenge, a one-day event where tourists and lighthouse visitors are encouraged to visit the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, as well as the nearby Head Harbour (East Quoddy Head) Lighthouse, Little Liver Lighthouse, and Lubec Channel Lighthouse, all in one day.

The West Quoddy Head Lighthouse Visitors’ Center is open Memorial Day Weekend through mid-October, 10:10 am to 4:00 pm daily (5:00 pm in July and August), seven days a week. Admission is Free and open to all ages. Visit http://www.westquoddy.com for more information.

Directions: Off U.S. Rt.1 North (from Ellsworth) or U.S. Rt.1 South (from Calais) take Rt.189 east to Lubec, follow signs to Quoddy Head State Park and/or the Lighthouse Visitor Center.

Thanks to Ron Pesha and Deb Bridges of the West Quoddy Head Light Keepers’ Association and John Smith, Manager of West Quoddy Head State Park, for their generous assistance in preparing this article.

Experience West Quoddy Head Lighthouse

Short circa 1950-1952 film clip of inside the lamphouse with then-current keeper and the Fresnel lens: http://lighthouse.cc/westquoddy/keeper.avi