Saddleback Ledge Lighthouse in 1960 Photograph courtesy Library of Congress

"The weirdest experience I have had since being in the service," reported Keeper W. W. Wells in 1935 "was the bombardment we got on a February night way back in 1927, when to my surprise I picked up 124 sea birds around the tower. They were ducks and drakes. Some were alive but the most were dead. Darkness had come on and with it came all the evidence that we were going to get a sou’easter. As the storm struck so did the cannonading …Crash and a bird came sailing through a pane of glass, dropping at my feet. He began fluttering around the floor with one wing broken and his bill telescoped almost through his head. He did not live long. In came another and away went another windowpane. The phenomenon was repeated again and again until the birds began to pile up like a mound."

"Just when I thought the cannonading had ceased, one big sea drake struck the plate glass in the tower lantern and came through without asking for a transfer. When he struck he broke up the works. Before he stopped he put out the light and broke prisms out of the lens. The bird weighed 10 pounds."

Saddleback Ledge Light Station Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

After he had made repairs and got the light burning again, a strange sight greeted the keeper. At the base of the tower was a tremendous heap of sea birds, some dead others alive. "Those that were just dazed" he recounted "and needed to recuperate, we placed in the boathouse and next day they went on their way."

The conical gray tower, with a white base stands 42 feet above ground and 54 feet above water. The 2,000 candlepower, fourth-order incandescent oil vapor fixed white light is visible for 13 miles.

In 2009, the Saddleback Ledge Lighthouse, deemed excess by the Coast Guard, was offered at no cost to eligible entities, including federal, state, and local agencies, non-profit corporations, and educational organizations under the provisions of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000.

Photo Gallery: 1

References

1. Historically Famous Lighthouses, U.S. Coast Guard.