The area now known as Stage Harbor in Chatham was visited by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1606, but skirmishes with the Monomoyick Indians convinced him not to remain there. English settlers arrived about a half -century later, and Stage Harbor (named for racks used for drying fish) developed into a busy fishing port.

The Lighthouse Board recommended a lighthouse on Harding's Beach on the northeast side of the channel known as Chatham Roads, as the light "would serve as a guide into old Stage Harbor , and would be of great value to vessels seeking refuge there and during bad weather." The area was busy with fishing traffic and thick fog was common. Congress appropriated $10,000 for the light station. A 48-foot cast-iron tower and wood-frame keeper's house were built at a cost of $9,862.74, and the light went into service on July 15, 1880. The lighthouse was fitted with a fifth-order Fresnel lens that exhibited a fixed white light visible for 12 nautical miles.

According to Admont G. Clark's Lighthouses of Cape Cod, the floor under the covered walkway between the house and tower became a hiding place for liquor for a time during prohibition. An inspector on a surprise visit noticed the loose floorboards, but much to the keeper's relief he merely told him to nail them down more securely.

In 1933 an automated light on a skeleton tower replaced Stage Harbor Light. Keeper Gunderson complained to the Boston Post: To save money they put in something that is far more expensive and less reliable and all that economy and put another employee on the unemployment list. Rather a poor way to reduce unemployment and surely no help toward better times. Gunderson stayed briefly in the Lighthouse Service, moving to Great Point on Nantucket as an assistant keeper for a year, after which he resigned.

The government removed the lantern and capped the tower, and the property passed into private hands. Henry Sears Hoyt told Yankee Magazine about his first visit to the lighthouse:

One day in January with the thermometer about five degrees above zero and a fifty-mile northwester blowing (that day Nantucket Lightship broke loose from her moorings), my brother and I drove to Chatham in an ancient Buick open car. Locating a guide to our prospective property, we drove to a point from which, through spray and wind haze, we could see, far out, a desolate looking group of buildings dominated by a faded white tower...

A more desolate spot would be hard to imagine. Doors had broken down, rocks were all over the floor where they had been thrown through the lower windows. Since then we have never found a stone worth throwing, and have calculated the vandals must have carried their ammunition out from the mainland. A howling gale, whistling around angry sea, but nevertheless a grand place.

Hoyt later found out that the lighthouse property was a portion of the original grant of 4,000 acres made by the Indians to his ancestor, William Nickerson, founder of Chatham. Hoyt commented, "...old great-great, etc., grandfather got all of Chatham for less than his descendants paid for a small portion, showing a weakening of New England trading ability."

The same family that first bought the property, the Hoyts, still owns it. There has never been electricity at the station, and no plumbing except a single pump.

The skeleton tower continues as an active aid to navigation, exhibiting a white flash. The lighthouse can be viewed across the water from the town landing at the end of Sears Road, or can be reached after a one-mile hike on Harding's Beach. Keep in mind that the house and tower are private property.

You can read much more about this lighthouse in the book The Lighthouses of Massachusetts by Jeremy D'Entremont.