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Marshall Point Lighthouse
Posted by Raven on April 10th, 2009
Marshall Point
This is one of my favorite lighthouses- for it’s simple presence and oft foggy views. Picture from a 2006 trip to Bar Harbor.
Millions of Americans have seen Marshall Point Lighthouse, even though they might not know it. The lighthouse’s wooden walkway served as the terminating point in Forrest Gump’s cross-country run… “Run, Forrest, Run.”
Marshall Point Lighthouse is situated on a rocky ledge at the tip of the St. George peninsula where it overlooks both Muscongus and Penobscot Bays. The station’s history begins in 1831, when the U.S. government appropriated $4,000 for a lighthouse and four acres of land at the site were purchased from Samuel Marshall for $120.
The first light tower, built of rubblestone in 1832, was conical with a diameter of seventeen feet at its base and a height of twenty feet. The tower’s walls were three feet thick at the ground and tapered to two feet at the top where they supported a soapstone deck. Inside the lantern room atop the deck, a set of seven lard oil lamps, each with its own 14-inch reflector, produced the light that was directed out to sea.
In 1858 a new tower was built at its present site, near the tide line. The lower half of the 24-foot, cylindrical tower was built of granite, and the upper half of brick. The lantern was made of cast iron and housed a fifth-order Fresnel lens showing a fixed white light. The cost for the new lighthouse and its modern illuminating apparatus was $5,000.
Marshall Point Light was automated in 1971, and by 1980 the LORAN station, which had been established in the dwelling, became obsolete allowing for personnel to be removed from the station. The keeper’s dwelling was boarded up and fell into disrepair until a hotel chain showed interest in the property in the mid-1980s. This threat spurred the community into action, and in 1986, the St. George Historical Society accepted the responsibility of restoring the keeper’s dwelling. After a successful fundraising campaign, the society restored the dwelling to its original splendor and was granted a thirty-year lease on the structured and grounds by the Coast Guard.
Previously in the Maine Lighthouses Series:
Bass Harbor Head
Heron Neck
