The low-rise Rockland lighthouse sits at the end of a granite breakwater almost a mile long. Image by Tom Adkinson

ROCKLAND, Maine – For millennia before Victorian author Edward Bulwer-Lytton opened a novel with “It was a dark and stormy night,” sailors at sea dealt with many a dark and stormy night and prayed for guidance. They sought reassurance that safe harbor was close or confirmation of where treacherous waters lay hidden in the waves.

Seeing a map of the jagged coast of Maine helps explain by the state needed so many lighthouses – 65. Image by Tom Adkinson

That was particularly true along the jagged, rocky and often dangerous coast of Maine, where 65 lighthouses eventually provided the help and reassurance sailors prayed for. The stories of those lighthouses – the people who built them, the keepers who staffed them and the preservationists who revere them – are inside a plain-looking building in the coastal town of Rockland.

The Maine Lighthouse Museum is a one-level structure that doesn’t even have a symbolic candy cane lighthouse architectural feature to make it stand out. That’s okay, because the collection of artifacts and photographs inside tell plenty of stories.

This glistening work of carefully crafted French glass art once provided the guiding light into the harbor at Isle au Haut. Image by Tom Adkinson

The core of the museum’s collection is the work of just one man, Ken Black. Black was a chief warrant officer in the U.S. Coast Guard and commanding officer of Station Rockland. In that role, he was responsible for the operation of many lighthouses, and with permission from his district admiral, he began collecting items from throughout his region of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont and New York.

A display at Rockland grew so large that artifacts were loaned to the Shore Village Museum, a facility Black ran upon his retirement from the Coast Guard. Black became known as “Mr. Lighthouse.” Today’s museum says it has “the largest collection of lighthouse, lifesaving and U.S. Coast Guard artifacts in the nation.”

Lighthouses, lightships, beacons, and lighted buoys created a network to improve safety along the coast of Maine. Image by Tom Adkinson

The museum’s website displays a comment from Black that distills its importance: “We have more stories of bravery, heroism, romance, and hardship associated with our lighthouses than anywhere else, primarily, because we have most of the oldest lighthouses in the nation.” 

All lighthouses are not created equal. Some are towering beacons. Some are modest appendages to a keeper’s house. Some stand at the points of peninsulas. Some cling to outcroppings of rock that barely rise above sea level.

There is no faux lighthouse towering over the Maine Lighthouse Museum. All its appeal is inside.  Image by Tom Adkinson

A photo of the Matinicus Rock Lighthouse illustrates that last point. Here’s a line from the official 1891 report about conditions: “There is neither tree nor shrub, and hardly a blade of grass on the rock. The surface is rough and irregular and resembles a confused pile of loose stone. Portions of the rock are frequently swept over by waves which move the huge boulders into new positions.”

Among the museum’s artifacts is this acetylene buoy. A pilot light always burned, but a sun-sensitive valve turned the acetylene on and off. Image by Tom Adkinson

One of the museum’s mesmerizing exhibits is a video of drone footage flying over each of Maine’s 65 lighthouses

Intriguing tales lie in the text explanations of artifact displays. For instance, the sharp angles and diamond-like qualities of a lens saved from the Isle au Haut lighthouse are captivating on their own, but two photos and a map tell the story behind the lighthouse. The citizens of Isle au Haut began petitioning for a lighthouse at their harbor in 1837. They got their wish 80 years later – in 1907.


Trip-planning resources:
MaineLighthouseMuseum.org and VisitMaine.com

(Travel writer Tom Adkinson’s book, 100 Things To Do in Nashville Before You Die, is available at Amazon.com.)