Nauset Light and dwelling in 1923 Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

Nauset Light is located on Nauset Beach off Cable Road, in Cape Cod National Seashore near Eastham, Massachusetts. The history of Nauset Light is inextricably linked with both the Three Sisters Lights of Nauset and the Chatham Lights. In 1923, the single remaining tower of the Three Sisters Light Station had deteriorated to the point where repairing it was senseless. This roughly coincided with the early 20th century decision to reduce all wasteful twin tower lights to a single light. Thus, it was logical to move the northernmost of Chatham’s twin towers to Nauset Beach where it would replace the last Sister.

The 48-foot-tall, brick-lined, cast-iron Chatham tower, originally built in 1877, was dismantled, hauled up the cape, and rebuilt 200 feet from the cliff’s edge at Nauset Beach. The remaining Sister (minus its fourth-order Fresnel lens) was sold for $10 to Albert Hall, who incorporated it into his residence known as "The Beacon." After its reconstruction, the former Chatham tower became known as Nauset Light or Nauset Beach Light, and the fourth-order Fresnel lens was installed in its lantern room.

The keepers of Nauset Light would live in a one-and-a-half-story keeper’s house built for Three Sisters Light in 1875 and use that station’s 1892 oil house.

The top portion of the previously all white tower was painted red in 1940, to give it a distinctive daymark.

When Eugene L. Coleman arrived at Nauset Lighthouse as keeper in 1942 after having served more than a decade at Cape Neddick in Maine, he was greeted at the local combination post office/store with the words, “Cap, I think you’re going to like it here. We have a great climate here. Never gets cold for much of a time. Once in a while we get a below-zero temperature, but, I tell you, there are some beautiful days here in winter.”

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“Well that winter,” Coleman said, “it was down to eight below. For two days you could look out this window at noon and you couldn’t see those houses except at noon. Vapor was that thick. It was some cold that winter.”

In 1946, the Coleman’s went for some time without a radio, because they were unable to obtain replacement batteries, but Amanda Coleman was pleased to be with her husband at an onshore station where they could at least enjoy their neighbors. “Many’s the time, from Christmas to Mother’s Day, that I haven’t seen another woman to talk to. The hardest part of lighthouse duty is being alone, having no one to talk to.”

The Coleman’s did not have electricity, although it had been promised. “The big icebox there,” Amanda said, “runs off kerosene. But it’s better here. We can go out. We had to learn to drive a car when we got here, we’d never had one. Now we go shopping once a week in Orleans. It was harder in Maine. Three times we almost drowned.”

Nauset Light was automated by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1955, and the keeper’s house was sold. In 1981, modern aerobeacons replaced the fourth-order Fresnel lens, which is currently displayed at Cape Cod National Seashore Visitor Center in Eastham. The light characteristic was changed to alternating red and white flashes, which ties in nicely with the tower’s daymark.

By the 1980s, the strength of the surf and harsh storms had eaten away the nearby cliff, endangering Nauset Light. Through the efforts of the Nauset Light Preservation Society, the 90-ton lighthouse tower and companion oil house were moved intact to safety 336 feet from the bluff’s edge by International Chimney Corporation and Expert House Movers. The move, which took just two days and started on November 16, 1996, was much easier than the job of relocation Highland Light, which the two companies had undertaken earlier that year.

At the time of its relocation, the tower stood a perilous twenty-five feet from falling off the cliff. Before the Society stepped in, the U.S. Coast Guard had no plans to save it, but they gladly leased the tower to the organization in 1995, so the move could be planned.

Through a combination of Federal grants and funds raised by the Nauset Light Preservation Society, on May 10, 1997, Nauset Light was relit as a private aid to navigation. (It had been decommissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard before the move.)

In 1998, Mary Daubenspeck agreed to donate the 1875 keeper’s dwelling to the National Park Service granted that she retain the right to use and occupy the house for another twenty-five years. In October of that year, the dwelling, which was just twenty-seven feet from the edge of the bluff, was moved across the road and reunited with the tower, keeping the same orientation and relative position to the lighthouse that it originally had.

Through the efforts of the Nauset Light Preservation Society, who maintain and operate the light, Nauset Light should remain safe—at least for the 75 to 100 more years it is expected to take for erosion to threaten the light again.

Photo Gallery: 1 2 3 4

References

1. The Lighthouses of New England, Edward Rowe Snow, 2005.
2. The Lighthouses of Massachusetts, Jeremy D'Entremont, 2007.
3. Annual Report of the Light House Board, various years.
4. Nauset Light Preservation Society website.