America's second-oldest lighthouse (after Boston) owes its existence to a town meeting held on Nantucket Island in 1846. Tired of seeing their whaling ships miss the Nantucket Harbor and pile up on nearby beaches, the island folk approved spending two hundred English pounds to construct a small wooden light tower. The little lighthouse burned to the ground several times during its more than 250 years of service, but it was always rebuilt. Shining from a height of only twenty-six feet above the water, its occulting red light has a range of about ten miles.

This lighthouse has been reproduced and is on exhibit at the Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut

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