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Geographic coordinates: 42° 02' 21" N 70° 03' 44" W
Nearest town: Truro. Located on the Cape Cod National Seashore, on the northeast coast of Cape Cod.
Established: 1797. Present lighthouse built: 1857. Automated: 1986.
Height of tower: 66 feet. Height of focal plane: 170 feet.
Previous optic: First-order Fresnel lens. Present optic: VRB-25.
Characteristic: White flash every 5 seconds.
A dangerous spot called Peaked Hill Bars, graveyard of many ships, lies about a mile off the northeast coast of Cape Cod. With maritime traffic increasing in the area, the federal government acquired 10 acres of land on a high bluff in Truro from Isaac Small. A 45-foot wooden lighthouse, Cape Cod’s first, was built in 1797.
Fascinating Fact 
One of the duties of the keeper was to count the vessels passing the light. In an eleven-day period in July 1853, Keeper Enoch Hamilton counted 1,200 craft passing his station. As many as 600 vessels were counted in a single day in 1867.
A new brick lighthouse was erected close to the site of the first one in 1833. Naturalist Henry David Thoreau visited Highland Light several times in the 1850s. Thoreau found the lighthouse “a neat building, in apple-pie order.”
The keeper’s dwelling was rebuilt in 1856. A new round brick lighthouse tower, 66 feet tall, was built in 1857 for $15,000. It was equipped with an enormous first-order Fresnel lens from Paris. This made Highland Light, the highest on the New England mainland, one of the coast’s most powerful lights. It was, for many years, the first glimpse of America seen by many immigrants from Europe.
An even larger Fresnel lens, rotating on a bed of mercury, was installed in 1901. After an electric light was put inside this lens in 1932, the 4,000,000-candlepower light could reportedly be seen for 45 miles. The giant lens was removed in the early 1950s, replaced by modern aerobeacons. The light was automated in 1986, but the station’s radio beacon remained in service, and the keeper’s dwelling continued to be used as Coast Guard housing.
When the first lighthouse was built in 1797, it was over 500 feet from the edge of the cliff. By the early 1990s, the forces of erosion left the lighthouse just over 100 feet from the edge. A group within the Truro Historical Society began raising funds for the relocation of the tower. In 1996, these funds were combined with federal funds and state funds to pay for the move of the 404-ton lighthouse to a site 450 feet back from its former location.
The operation got under way in June 1996, under the direction of International Chimney Corporation of Buffalo, with the help of subcontractor Expert House Moving of Maryland. Thousands of sightseers came to catch a glimpse of the rare move. The move took eighteen days. The relocated lighthouse stands close to the seventh fairway of the Highland Golf Links.
The lighthouse is now open daily to visitors, mid-May through October. There are exhibits and a gift shop in the keeper’s house. An admission fee is charged, and children must be 51 inches tall to climb the lighthouse. For more information, call 508-487-1121 or visit www.capecodlight.org.
To get to the lighthouse from Route 6, exit at Highland Road in North Truro. Bear right onto Highland Road and follow to the end. Turn right onto South Highland Road and continue a short distance, then turn left onto Lighthouse Road and the parking lot for the lighthouse and the Highland House Museum. There are signs directing you to the site from Route 6.
SIDE TRIP: Highland House Museum
This building, located close to Highland Lighthouse, was originally built in 1907 as a summer hotel. The museum’s eclectic collection includes paintings, shipwreck mementoes, and fishing and whaling gear. Upstairs rooms have Victorian furniture, old sea chests, and a collection of antique clothing. The museum is open daily from June 1 to September 30; call or check online for the hours.
Highland House Museum
P. O. Box 486
Truro, MA 02666
Phone: 508-487-3397
Web site: www.trurohistorical.org
