Portland Breakwater Light - South Portland ME
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nomadwillie
N 43° 39.337 W 070° 14.092
19T E 400424 N 4834365
First lighted in June 1875 by Keeper Stephen Hubbard, the new Portland Breakwater Light, known locally as “Bug Light,” was modeled after the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, built in Athens, Greece, in the fourth century B.C.
Waymark Code: WMH8RX
Location: Maine, United States
Date Posted: 06/07/2013
Views: 8
In September 1853, Lieut. Thornton A. Jenkins, secretary of the Lighthouse Board, recommended a sixth-order light at the end of the breakwater. “It is absolutely necessary to make a safe entrance into the harbor,” he wrote, “and to guard against striking the breakwater itself, which is nearly under water at high tide, and therefore on dark nights difficult to be seen so as to be avoided.”
The Lighthouse Board asked Congress in 1853 for an appropriation of $3,500 for a lighthouse and keeper’s house, or for $1,000 if it was deemed that no keeper’s house was needed. An appropriation of $3,500 was made on August 3, 1854.
Construction took about four months during the following year, and on August 1, 1855, a small, octagonal wooden tower went into service. The first keeper, W. A. Dyer, illuminated the sixth-order Fresnel lens. The fixed red light was 25 feet above mean high water.
After a congressional appropriation of $6,000 in June 1874, a new lighthouse was erected on a granite foundation at the end of the structure. The original tower was moved to Little Diamond Island, where it became a lookout tower at a buoy depot.
First lighted in June 1875 by Keeper Stephen Hubbard, the new Portland Breakwater Light, known locally as “Bug Light,” was modeled after the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, built in Athens, Greece, in the fourth century B.C.
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