Lighthouses: Free to good home if nobody else wants them

Posted 9:48PM on Friday 7th June 2002 ( 23 years ago )

WASHINGTON D.C. - Want a lighthouse? The Interior Department has such a deal for you. It's trying to get rid of 301 of them, all considered government surplus. The Coast Guard doesn't want them anymore, so it's willing to give them away to anybody who'll offer them a good home. There are a couple of catches: government and nonprofit groups have first dibs; and lighthouses are expensive to keep up. Interior Secretary Gale Norton is announcing next week the first six being turned over to public and private interests under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Program. Congress and former President Clinton created the program in 2000 at the urging of Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind. A visit in January to Point Pinos Light in Monterey, Calif. the oldest active lighthouse on the West Coast, where a light has been shining since 1855 sparked Norton's interest. She asked the National Park Service to take a closer look at what her agency could do. Since then, the department has become the light middleman, its Maritime Heritage Program handling details for the Coast Guard. Next week, Norton travels to Georgia's Tybee Island Light, then to Lake Michigan's Point Betsie Lighthouse; Michigan has 46 lighthouses, more than any other state. She'll recommend that the General Services Administration, acting as temporary custodian for the lighthouses, turn over the first six to new owners including a city, a museum, a historical society and the Park Service. ``There is a mystique to lighthouses, a drama, a history, almost an aura of reverence for their lifesaving function,'' Norton said in remarks prepared for delivery at the ceremony Monday in Georgia. ``It is not surprising that historians, lighthouse buffs and just plain citizens have been part of an effort to rescue lighthouses from either disrepair or neglect.'' The lighthouses being given away next week are Rondout Creek Light in Kingston, N.Y.; Esopus Meadows Light, also known as the Middle Hudson River Light, near Esopus, N.Y.; St. Augustine Light, in St. Augustine, Fla.; Tybee Island Light, near Savannah, Ga.; Little River Light, near Cutler, Maine; and Munising Range Lights, near Frankfort, Mich. ``One of the outstanding features of this law is that it puts nonprofits on an equal footing with government in becoming partners in the preservation of lighthouses,'' Norton said. Culleen Chambers, director of the Tybee Island Historical Society, said she was proud and humbled that her group will help ``set the stage for all future transfers in the nation.'' When the lighthouse giveaway is complete, only one lighthouse in the country will be required by federal law to have a lightkeeper: the Boston Harbor Light, the nation's first one, established in 1716 on Little Brewster Island. It was blown up by the British in 1776, rebuilt, and has had a light burning again since 1783. The law authorizes the no-cost transfer of historic lighthouses and stations from the Coast Guard to federal, local and nonprofit groups. If insufficient interest is found among those groups, individuals can stake a claim. ``It will be the exception, not the rule,'' said Dan Smith, special assistant to the National Park Service director, coordinator of the pilot program. ``There's a huge outcry in this country from people who want to participate in preserving lighthouses.'' The Coast Guard has automated the nation's lights and lacks the money to maintain the lighthouses but hopes to put them in the hands of groups that can. But anyone taking on a lighthouse can expect to spend millions of dollars, Smith said. It must be maintained according to strict federal standards, and the transfer deed includes a clause that says the lighthouse reverts to federal ownership if it is not kept up. Along the seacoasts and the Great Lakes, more than 200 lighthouses are open to tours. People can sleep in about 15 of them in California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington state.

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