Spring Point Ledge Light

by Joan Carroll

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Dimensions

18.000 x 12.000 inches

Title

Spring Point Ledge Light

Artist

Joan Carroll

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photograph

Description

It was a grim, gray, foggy morning at Spring Point Ledge Light in South Portland, Maine, USA. This lighthouse is a sparkplug lighthouse that marks a dangerous obstruction on the west side of the main shipping channel into Portland Harbor. Many vessels ran aground on Spring Point ledge before requests from seven steamship companies in 1891 convinced the federal government to build a lighthouse. You can imagine the hazard during storms when even a mild summer fog shows the difficulties to navigation! Spring Point Ledge Light is a fairly typical "sparkplug" style lighthouse of the period, built on a cylindrical cast-iron caisson. Unlike many of this type, however, the tower is built of brick rather than cast-iron. The lighthouse has a cistern in the basement, topped by four levels, including two floors of living quarters. Originally there was no breakwater connecting the lighthouse to the short so that the lighthouse was considered a 'stag' station with a male keeper and assistant keeper living inside the tower. Early lightkeepers had to be creative in their means of exercise. Somebody figured that it took 56 jogs around the tower's main deck to make one mile! The breakwater connecting the tower to the shore was not constructed until 1951. The lighthouse is adjacent to the campus of Southern Maine Community College. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1968.

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Uploaded

July 18th, 2013

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