Issues → July/August 2009 → Interact → 10 Things to Do → All About Lighthouses →

Lighthouse Museums

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The largest lighthouse museum in the United States is right here in New England, thanks to the 2007 merger of Rockland's Maine Lighthouse Museum with the collections of the American Lighthouse Foundation, an advocacy and preservation organization, formerly based in Wells, Maine. Paintings, photographs, artifacts, lectures and presentations, and more.
1 Park Drive
Rockland, ME
207-594-3301
mainelighthousemuseum.com/
lighthousefoundation.org/

On a fragile-looking spit of land jutting into Boston Harbor from the south sits the Hull Lifesaving Museum, whose mission is to preserve the region's maritime culture through its collections, exhibits, and other programs. It's based at the Point Allerton U.S. Lifesaving Station. The tradition of lifesaving in Hull dates back to the post-Revolutionary period and reached its peak some 100 years later with the Hurricanes of 1888 and 1898. Hull crews are credited with saving more than 1,000 lives over the course of the century and a quarter before the U.S. Coast Guard was created.
Hull Lifesaving Museum
Open year-round
1117 Nantasket Ave.
Hull, MA
781-925-5433
lifesavingmuseum.org/

Also in Massachusetts, on the island whose shoals were once dubbed "the graveyard of the Atlantic," the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum showcases a collection of more than 5,000 objects, including period surfboats and rescue beach carts, lifesaving equipment, vintage photos, Fresnel lenses, shipwreck-history exhibits, and more. Fee includes admission to the historic Coffin School, which houses the art and artifact collections of the
Egan Maritime Institute, celebrating the island's seafaring heritage.
Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum
Open through Oct. 12
158 Polpis Road
Nantucket, MA
508-228-1885
nantucketshipwreck.org/

Egan Maritime Institute
Coffin School
4 Winter St.
Nantucket, MA
508-228-2505
eganinstitute.org/