The history of the Bass River Lighthouse began with a lantern that Warren Crowell kept burning in the attic window of his Wrinkle Point home in West Dennis. Mariners crossing Nantucket Sound were so pleased with Crowell’s assistance that local sea captains voluntarily contributed 25 cents per month for fuel.

The town of Dennis, bounded by Cape Cod Bay on the north and Nantucket Sound on the south, consists of five villages all having Dennis and a modifier in their names. West Dennis has historically had many fisherman and residents employed in maritime trades, and as the number of fishing and whaling vessels in the area increased, the erection of a beacon on a breakwater at the mouth of the Bass River was proposed. Thinking they deserved something better, locals sent a petition to Congress appealing for a proper lighthouse instead of the beacon.

Congress agreed and appropriated $4,000, on September 28, 1850. But when a Revenue Marine officer arrived on site, he promptly declared the lighthouse was not needed and halted steps toward its construction.

By 1852, the newly formed Lighthouse Board sent its own inspector, who decided that a lighthouse was indeed required.

The officer of the revenue marine who was sent to examine and report upon this site condemned it as unnecessary. It was apparent, however, to the board, from the information received from various reliable sources—among which may be included that of the officer of the coast survey who was charged with examining this locality with reference to another object—that a small light is required at or near Bass river breakwater. A small light is now kept up by private means at this point. Four thousand dollars is recommended as the necessary sum to plan an economical light and build a keeper’s house, at this point.

On March 3, 1853, Congress once again appropriated $4,000. A plot just east of Bass River was then purchased from George W. Richardson in 1854. A white, 1.5-story, wooden keeper’s house with an iron lantern room atop the pitched roof was built using materials pulled by oxen across the neighboring salt marshes and sand dunes. The lighthouse was first lit on April 30, 1855.

It is only appropriate that Warren Crowell, who kept the lantern lit in his attic window, was appointed Bass River’s first keeper. Crowell’s granddaughter Millie Crowell Stringer recalled that a “smaller lighthouse” had been placed to mark the jetty off West Dennis Beach prior to 1855. While apparently a small lighthouse or beacon was located there, little is known about it.

In the book Cape Cod Remembrances, Marion Crowell Ryder painted the following fond portrait of the area in the olden days:

The house stood tall and solid and foursquare, quite a distance back from the edge of the water. In those days the beach presented a busy scene…it was lined with fishing dories, moored or drawn up on the sand, and great piles of long, slender weir poles were stacked here and there … Atop the sand dunes straggled a uneven line of small, weather-beaten fish shanties where their owners could stow their gear and warm themselves about battered little stoves in inclement weather. When we went to the beach as children we never tired of wandering along the shore, watching the fishermen mending their nets, setting out their weirs, or bringing in a shining catch ... The lighthouse itself always dominated the beach with its purpose and significance.

Crowell served as keeper until 1861, when he relocated his wife and nine children into a house on Fisk Street and marched off to serve in the Civil War. Captain James Chase assumed Crowley’s duties. Chase’s granddaughter, Carrie May Sheridan, recalled the expectant families and friends waiting on the West Dennis beach for passengers to arrive from the anchored ships, “Horse-drawn carriages drove into the shallow water’s edge to take them ashore.”

The transfer from Captain Chase to Zelotes Wixon of Dennis in the 1860s was not a pleasant one. Wixon wrote that when he arrived for training, “[Chase] refused me all access to the light until the first day of August though I several times requested permission to look at it and examine the same in order to fit me for my position and the proper discharge of my duties.” Wixon also complained that Chase seemed to be adulterating the lighthouse’s oil.

Although wounded and taken prisoner in Virginia during the war, Crowell was able to return to his post at the lighthouse in the early 1870s. In 1880, after the building of the Stage Harbor Lighthouse, the Bass River Light was determined to be unnecessary and sold at auction. A newspaper reported that Crowell returned “to his former residence where he is having a barn built.”

The decision to deactivate the light was immediately questioned and, yielding to pressure, the government repurchased the lighthouse and relit it on July 1, 1881. Hyannis resident Captain Samuel Adams Peak served as keeper and remained until his passing in 1906.

Following Peak’s death, Russell Eastman became the station’s last keeper. Marion Crowell Ryder described Eastman as “taciturn and unceasingly busy keeping the lighthouse and its out-buildings in spotless condition.” Her memories of Mrs. Eastman were pleasant and full of praise, “[She] always had a warm welcome awaiting us in the house. It came to be that no trip to the beach was complete without a visit in her immaculate kitchen. She was a wonderful cook as innumerable doughnuts and cookies testified, but especially was she skilled in doing the most beautiful embroidery that I have ever seen. Literally, for her, there were ‘long winter evenings’ when the wind raged and the foaming tide made an island of the lighthouse and she found solace in turning her mind toward creating a wealth of flowers and butterflies on table linens and dress lengths which had been ordered over the summer. Several of us wore dresses of her exquisite workmanship when we graduated from high school.”

Bass River Light remained in service until 1914 when the Cape Cod Canal opened, redirecting boat traffic away from Nantucket Sound and towards Buzzard Bay. The Fresnel lens was removed from the decommissioned lighthouse, and a skeleton tower with an automatic beacon was constructed across the river at South Yarmouth to replace it.

Harry K. Noyes, of the Noyes Buick Company in Boston, bought the light at auction, enlarged the main house, constructed additional buildings, landscaped the grounds, and used it for a summer house. In 1933, after Noyes passed away, the property was put on the market where it remained until 1938, when it was purchased by State Senator Everett Stone. Mr. Stone planned to develop and resell the property, but by the time the ownership papers came through in June, it was too late in the year for construction to begin. To pay the mortgage, Mrs. Stone began to take in lodgers. So many guests wished to return that it led to the founding of the Lighthouse Inn. In 1939, a stay for two, including three meals, cost $5.

After 75 years of darkness, the light was relit on August 7, 1989, the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Lighthouse Service—now the U.S. Coast Guard. The privately maintained light, with a signature of a one-second flash every six seconds, has officially been designated the West Dennis Light.

Although some years ago it was a motel chain that became famous for its humorous ads featuring the quote, “We'll leave the light on for you,” now it is the Lighthouse Inn that has turned its light back on for local mariners and for you.

References

1. The Lighthouses of Massachusetts, Jeremy D'Entremont, 2007.
2. Annual Report of the Light House Board, various years.
3. “The Lighthouse Inn: A Shining Beacon for Travelers,” Jeremy D'Entremont, Lighthouse Digest, September 2001.
4. The Lighthouse Inn website.
5. Dennis Historical Society website.