In 1938, just before we moved from Head of Falls to Front Street, a major event occurred in our lives: my father bought a car. Although it was an old 1929 Chevrolet, for us it was an unbelievable luxury. He kept the car for just a few years, until gas rationing began during World War II, and then he had to sell it. Many years then passed before he bought another car. But for the few years he owned the old Chevy, a window opened for us. For the first time I traveled outside of Waterville.
I do not recall my parents ever taking a trip while I was growing up, what I would now call a vacation. They had time off, of course, but that was usually spent working on or around the house. Once in a while during the summer, however, in the few years that he owned the old Chevy, my father took us to visit other places in Maine. These were always day trips, never overnight, and my mother prepared and brought along all the food we would need.
I vividly recall three places my parents took me to see: Moosehead Lake, Bar Harbor, and the Maine coast in the Belfast area. Moosehead Lake is Maine’s largest inland lake. It was then about a three-hour drive north from Waterville. What I remember about that trip is that I was car sick all the way, so it seemed to me to take about three days. From that day until very much later in life, I was unable to read in a moving automobile without getting dizzy, and I always thought of the trip to Moosehead Lake. Finally, after entering the Senate, out of necessity I forced myself to read in the car, at least briefly, but I still can’t do so for more than a few minutes at a time.
The other two trips also made lasting impressions on me, but they were positive. Bar Harbor is located on Mount Desert Island, now about a two-hour drive from Waterville. My father wanted to show it to us, along with the adjacent Acadia National Park. It was my first view of the Island, which since has become an important part of my life.
Belfast is a small city on the Maine coast, about an hour’s drive from Waterville. My father liked to visit it because there was an outdoor pool nearby where we kids could swim, and just to the south, along Route 1, was Lincolnville Beach, a local public beach right on the ocean (not a common thing on that part of the Maine coast, north of Portland). Just to the north is the small town of Stockton Springs. There, on the west bank of the mouth of the Penobscot River, is a place called Fort Point, where a lighthouse stands. As lighthouses go, it is not an especially impressive structure, being short and relatively squat. But when my father took me there it was the first lighthouse I’d ever seen. It made a powerful impression.
The first lighthouse in the United States was built in Boston Harbor in 1716. In all over 1,200 have been built in this country, along the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico. But Maine is the Lighthouse State—an unofficial title, self-proclaimed, but deserved nonetheless. More than sixty lighthouses guard our rugged coast, from Kittery to Calais. The people of Maine, myself included, have a powerful emotional attachment to lighthouses. We’re not alone. For many people these structures serve chiefly as romantic reminders of a time past, a time before radar, sonar, and on-ship electronics combined to diminish the need for sailors to use lighthouses to navigate safely.
But there was a time when lighthouses served an important role, when the building and operating of lighthouses as aids for rendering safe and easy navigation of any bay, inlet, harbor, or port in the United States was one of the principal activities of the federal government. One of the very first undertakings of the first Congress, which organized on April 6, 1789, was to officially launch America’s lighthouse system. In July of that year Representative Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts introduced legislation that called for the establishment and support of navigational aids. It was passed by the House on July 20, amended by the Senate on July 31, and signed into law by President Washington on August 7, 1789. The act created a federal role in the support, maintenance, and repair of all lighthouses, beacons, bridges, and public piers necessary for safe navigation; it also commissioned the first federal lighthouse. It was our nation’s first public works law.
For most people the term public works project means highways, bridges, dams, and public buildings, but two hundred years ago they included—prominently—lighthouses. As the first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton was responsible for the care and superintendence of the lights. He took this responsibility seriously. Many orders and contracts concerning the lighthouse service were personally approved by Hamilton, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
The value of lighthouses to the development of maritime shipping and transportation in our country can never be measured. Countless ships have made safe passage off our shores and on our lakes because of the beams of light from the towers standing at land’s end. The architectural beauty of these structures cannot be fully appreciated without recognition of the skill of the engineers and workers who built them in what were often hazardous places and against almost insurmountable odds. Nor do most of us comprehend and appreciate the sacrifices made by the lighthouse keepers and their families. They devoted—and in some cases jeopardized—their lives for the safety of others. Lighthouse duty was difficult: lonely, boring for long periods of time, and dangerous in times of crisis. For two centuries these impressive structures and the men and women who served at them have come to symbolize stoicism, heroism, duty, and faithfulness—characteristics that Americans admire in themselves and in others.
In 1989 the Coast Guard completed the automation of lighthouses. One of the last to be automated was the Portland Head Light. Located in Cape Elizabeth, just south of Portland, it is one of the most beautiful and most photographed lighthouses in the country. Protecting mariners against the rock-bound coast of Maine, it is a superb example of the grace and beauty of lighthouses.
Unfortunately that beauty is endangered. As automation has progressed, more and more lighthouses have been left without keepers, easy targets for vandalism and damage caused by erosion and storms. That is why in 1988 I introduced legislation to establish a Bicentennial Lighthouse Fund. Timed for the two-hundredth anniversary of the federal government’s establishment of a lighthouse construction and maintenance program, it provided limited federal funds that, when joined with state and privately donated funds, have been used to repair and preserve lighthouses throughout the nation. Many lighthouses were already listed in the National Register of Historic Places; the legislation authorized a survey of others, which resulted in several more being included in the Register. It was a modest bill, one of the least noted pieces of legislation I authored while serving in the Senate, but it was one that brought me great pleasure and is a warm memory.
When I was notified that the president had signed the bill into law, my mind returned to the summer day many years ago, when I stood with my father before the Fort Point Lighthouse. As he did with other subjects, he had read up on this one, and he described to me what lighthouses were, what they did, how the lights worked, and the history of this particular light. He loved knowledge for its own sake, and he loved sharing it with us for our sake. As I reflected about that day, I thought my father would have approved of my effort to preserve the lighthouses.