Barkhamsted Lighthouse

Barkhamsted Lighthouse was a small mixed community in Barkhamsted, Connecticut, above the West Branch Farmington River, where economically marginalized Native American, African American, and white residents lived during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It began in the mid-eighteenth century on land bought by James Chaugham and later his son Samuel, a Narragansett from Block Island. Its name arose when stagecoach drivers used the settlement’s lights as a guide on the road south. Abandoned in the eighteen sixties as residents sought better opportunities, the site has yielded building foundations, kilns, a well, a cemetery, and household artifacts, preserving an important record of a little-documented frontier community.

Barkhamsted, Connecticut · United States