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Eagle Island Lighthouse Fun Facts
Location: East Penobscot Bay
Closest City: Deer Isle, Maine
Latitude: 44.2183 Longitude: -68.7683
Body of Water: Penobscot Bay
Open to Public: Site: Yes
Tower: No
Station Established: 1838
Present Tower Activated: 1858
Status of Light: Operational
Tower Height: 30 ft.
Optic: 300mm Optic - Solar Powered, 1963
Fourth Order Fresnel, 1858
National Register Reference #: Not Listed
Listing Name: N/A
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Tell a friend that you spent time on Eagle Island in Maine and you may cause some serious confusion. Maine plays host to eight Eagle Islands. In fact, Eagle Island in Casco Bay is the home of Admiral Robert E. Peary, discoverer of the North Pole. It is now a state park and Peary's house is a museum. Only one Eagle Island, however, is situated on east Penobscot Bay with a lighthouse that guides mariners north past the Hardhead Shoals to the Penobscot River and on to Bangor. In the mid-1800s, more than 8.5 billion board feet of lumber were loaded at the Bangor port for shipment down the river and out into the bay. Even though the port at Bangor is closed during winter months due to freezing, it was not uncommon to have better than 2,500 ships pass through annually during this period.
The Eagle Island lighthouse was commissioned in 1839 (along with the Bear Island and Saddleback Ledge lights), at the end of a busy fifteen year period during which seventeen lighthouses were built in Maine. The conical, white, granite cobblestone lighthouse was renovated in 1858 at which time a fourth-order Fresnel lens was installed. The tower and lantern are largely unchanged since that time except for the replacement of the lens with a 300mm solar-powered optic in 1963 when the light was automated. The site also had a four-bedroom keeper's house, oil house (1895), storage building (1902), and square, pyramid-shaped fog signal tower (1939). Of these additional buildings, only the signal tower remains.
In 1945, Coast Guardsmen took over for the civilian keepers who had tended the Eagle Island lighthouse for more than 106 years. In 1963, the lighthouse was automated via the use of twenty-seven batteries which had to be carried back and forth from the servicing Coast Guard cutter on a regular basis.
In 1962, the General Services Administration decreed that the majority of the federally owned land on which the Eagle Island light stood would no longer be needed after the light was automated. The designated land was to be made available to state or local government or, if necessary, offered for private sale. Unfortunately, no takers stepped forward and, in 1964, the Coast Guard destroyed the keeper's house and other buildings at the site. An attempt to remove the 1,200 pound brass fog bell resulted unintentionally in the bell falling down an eighty-foot cliff into the ocean where it stayed until it was salvaged by a local caretaker and dragged via lobster boat to Great Spruce Head where it resides to this day.
Located between Deer Isle and North Haven, the 263 acre Eagle Island is roughly a half-mile wide and 1.25 miles long. The Coast Guard announced in 2000 that it intended to discontinue use of the light, which is becoming more and more difficult to see due to tree growth. The light, however, remains in service. The site is owned and managed by the Eagle Light Caretakers.
Directions
- This site can only be viewed by boat.
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