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In his book Cape Cod,
Henry David Thoreau described the harbor at Provincetown, at
the tip of Cape Cod:
The Harbor of Provincetown... is deservedly famous. It
opens to the south, is free of rocks, and is never frozen over...
It is the harbor of the Cape and of the fishermen of Massachusetts
generally.
The first two lighthouses in the vicinity, at Race Point and
Long Point, were established by 1826. By the 1860s, it was determined
that another aid was needed at Wood End, the southernmost extremity
of the curving spit of land that protected the harbor. A white
pyramidal day beacon was first erected at Wood End in 1864, and
Congress appropriated $15,000 for a lighthouse on June 10, 1872.
A 38-foot brick tower -- originally painted brown -- was erected,
and the light went into service on November 20, 1872. A fifth-order
Fresnel lens exhibited a red flash every 15 seconds, 45 feet
above the sea. A keeper's dwelling was built about 50 feet northeast
of the lighthouse. The first keeper, Thomas Lowe, remained at
the station for 25 years. | 
- Wood End Light c. 1880
- From the collection of Edward Rowe
Snow, courtesy of Dorothy Bicknell
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- U.S. Coast Guard photo
| In spite of the three lighthouses around Provincetown, wrecks
still occurred with some regularity. Lowe occasionally had to
make hasty trips to town to awaken sleeping citizens to help
with the rescue of shipwreck victims.
A lifesaving station had
been established at Race Point in 1872, and one was finally added
at Wood End in 1896, a short distance east of the light station.
In 1896, a new wood-frame keeper's house was built, along
with a storage shed and a small brick oil house for the storage
of kerosene. |
New machinery for the revolving lens was installed
in 1900. Two years later, a 1,000-pound fog bell and bell tower
were added near the lighthouse.
Eight days before Christmas in 1927, the Navy submarine S-4
and the Coast Guard cutter Paulding collided a half mile
south of Wood End Light. 40 men on the S-4 died in the
disaster. The S-4 was raised three months later and was
used to help devise greater safety measures for future submarines.During a stretch of severe cold in February 1935, Keeper Douglas
Shepherd was marooned at the light station for weeks. The Boston
Globe reported:
Keeper Shepherd has struggled vainly to break through the
arctic expanse that extends for miles beyond his light. Several
times he has attempted it, using axe and crowbar to attack the
ice blocks in his path, but each time he has been forced to turn
back. |
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Wood End Light Station c. 1900
From the collection of Edward Rowe Snow, courtesy of Dorothy Bicknell |
Ordinarily, Shepherd made a daily trip into town. He had no
worries despite his isolation, according to the newspaper report,
as the Coast Guard kept him in touch with the mainland. James Hinkley Dobbins served as a relief keeper for a period in 1937. His wife, Ruby Kelley Dobbins, recalled in her book The Additional Keeper
that her husband gave her explicit instructions to “buy all the
mousetraps in stock” at a local hardware store before she came for her
first visit; the keeper’s house was overrun with mice. The Dobbins
family had some time for sightseeing in Provincetown and especially
enjoyed seeing the traditional town crier, ringing his brass bell and
shouting the news of the day.
The lighthouse was automated in 1961 and all the other buildings
except the oil house were destroyed. The lighthouse's original
lens had been replaced by a fifth-order lens in 1916, and this
was replaced by a modern optic when the light was automated.
The light was converted to solar power in 1981.
The Cape Cod Chapter of the American Lighthouse Foundation
has been licensed by the Coast Guard to restore and maintain
Wood End Light. Volunteers painted the tower and oil house in
the fall of 2000. At this writing, there are plans for a volunteer
work party to repaint the tower in spring 2007.
You can walk to Wood End Light across the breakwater built
in 1911, but breaking waves sometime make the going tricky at
high tide. It's a fairly strenuous walk of 30-45 minutes each
way to the lighthouse. There are limited parking spaces available
near the start of the walk; it's an additional walk of around
20-30 minutes from the center of town.
The lighthouse, still an active aid to navigation, is also
viewable from some of the excursion boats out of Provincetown.
For more information or to donate to the restoration of Wood
End Light, contact the American
Lighthouse Foundation.
Keepers: (This
list is a work in progress. If you have any information on the keepers
of this lighthouse, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at
nelights@gmail.com. Anyone copying this list onto another web site does
so at their own risk, as the list is always subject to updates and
corrections.) Thomas Lowe (1872-1897); Philip
R. Smith (1897-?); Douglas H. Shepherd (c. 1920s-1930s); George H. Fitzpatrick
(c. 1940s), George Grimes (c. 1940s); George Smith (relief keeper
1923-1936)
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