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From the collection of the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association
Wood End Lighthouse and Keeper's house. The keeper's house was destroyed when the lighthouse was automated in 1961. |
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History Highlights:
Wood End Lighthouse
Laurel Guadazno
BANNER COLUMNIST
In contrast to its desolate appearance today, the location of Wood End Lighthouse, between Race Point and Long Point, was once described by the Pilgrims as 'compassed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood.' Thus the name Wood End, for the trees that once grew in the area where Wood End Lighthouse was built in 1872.
This lighthouse was one of the last lighthouses built in the region even though the area where it is located is dangerous. Many ships wrecked as they tried to make their way around this point to seek shelter in Provincetown Harbor. Henry David Thoreau met a victim of one of these wrecks when he visited Provincetown some 150 years ago. He writes, 'Before we left the wharf we made the acquaintance of a passenger whom we had seen at the hotel. When we asked him which way he came to Provincetown, he answered that he was cast ashore at Wood End Saturday night in the same storm in which the St. John wrecked. He had been at work as a carpenter in Maine and took passage for Boston in a schooner laden with lumber. When the storm came on, they endeavored to get into Provincetown harbor. 'It was dark and misty,' said he, 'and as we were steering for Long Point Light we suddenly saw the land near us - for our compass was out of order - varied several degrees [a mariner always casts the blame on his compass] - but there being a mist on shore, we thought it was farther off than it was, and so held on, and we immediately struck on the bar. ... 'Well, were there any drowned?' I asked. 'No; we all got safe to a house at Wood End at midnight, wet to our skins and half frozen to death.' He had apparently spent the time since playing checkers at the hotel and was congratulating himself on having beaten a tall fellow-boarder at the game. 'The vessel is to be sold at auction today,' he added. (We had heard the sound of the crier's bell which advertised it.) 'The Captain is rather down about it, but I tell him to cheer up and he will soon get another vessel.'
The history of Wood End begins on June 10, 1872 when Congress approved an appropriation of $15,000. The lighthouse and a keeper's house were quickly completed, and the annual report of the Lighthouse Board reports the light was first lit on November 20, 1872. The report goes on to describe the tower as 'of brick, pyramidal in form, and is painted brown. The focal plane is ... 45 feet above the sea. The lens is of the fifth order ... illuminating the entire horizon, and will show a red light flashing every 15 seconds which can be seen ... at a distance of eleven nautical miles.'
As the years passed, changes were made to the site. In 1896 the government added another keeper's house at a cost of $29,000, a storage shed for $4,000 and an oil house for $1,500. The oil house was a necessary storage area for the cheaper, but more flammable kerosene fuel that was used to light the light when whale oil prices rose from 90 cents per gallon to $2.43 per gallon.
Four years later, in 1900, a 'revolving machine, for the optical apparatus, made in the lighthouse machine shop at Boston, was installed.' Because in times of intense fog the lighthouse was of little use, a bell tower and fog bell were finally added in 1902. The lighthouse remained manned until 1961. At that time the government destroyed the lighthouse keepers' houses and storage shed and automated the lighthouse.
Today, Wood End lighthouse remains an active aid to navigation. Solar power lights an aerobeacon that flashes a red light every 10 seconds. In 1911, when the stone breakwater was built across the end of the harbor to buffer the effects of the waves on the end of the Cape, it became relatively easy to cross over to the lighthouse. In good weather it takes about a half an hour to make the pleasant 1.2 mile walk to the lighthouse and oil house. Care should be taken at times of extreme high tide as the waves can sometimes cover the breakwater in spots.
[Laurel Guadazno is visitor services manager for the Pilgrim Monument & Provincetown Museum. She also writes 'History Highlights,' heard regularly on WOMR, 92.1 FM.]
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Mar 23rd, 2000