Smith Island Light

Built on Smith Island in 1858, Smith Island Light followed a classic New England design with a keeper’s house and roof-centered tower near the island’s western bluff. The bluff’s steady erosion gradually brought the shoreline to the building, and by the 1950s the edge had reached the front door, forcing abandonment. Although listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the lighthouse had already become a ruin and finally fell into the sea in spring 1998. Before its loss, the station was modernized with battery and generator power, and in 1957 an automated skeletal tower replaced it as the island’s navigational light.