Boon Island Lighthouse

It's often very difficult to separate the interesting physical attributes, characteristics and surroundings of historically significant buildings, such as lighthouses, from the colorful lives and folklore surrounding their inhabitants. Lighthouse keepers, without a doubt led extraordinarily desolate, lonely, and sometimes dangerous lives protecting the welfare of mariners, as well as personally surviving the harsh elements connected with their posts. Nowhere were the conditions anymore bleak and challenging, then off the cold, rocky and treacherous coast of Maine, on Boon Island, where fog, "nor'easters" and changing weather conditions, combine to make survival a difficult proposition. Many a lighthouse keeper held-on by the skin of their teeth while being battered by unusually harsh storms and high tides. Water temperature during the winter averages around 35 degrees F. One such isolated post was Boon Island Lighthouse.

At 133 feet, Boon Island's lighthouse is the tallest in Maine. It is also thought to be one of the most isolated and most dangerous. In fact, the island's name is a result of legends and lore. Boon Island is frequently pummeled by deadly storms, and many a ship was wrecked there in bad weather. One legend, which supposedly took place in 1710, has the shipwrecked crew of the Nottingham Galley resorting to cannibalism! As a result locals and mainland fisherman began leaving packages of food and clothing, known as "boon," on the island to be used by shipwreck victims who were able to reach the rocks.

Boon Island is, in reality, a pile of rocks about 400 square feet in size. The first lighthouse to be built there, in 1799, lasted five years in spite of being made of wood. The original light was blown away in a storm and replaced with two more lights before the tower that is there today, was built in 1852. The current cylindrical tower is made of hand-hewn granite blocks.