5 Maine Lighthouses You Can’t Get Inside

Twenty Maine lighthouse towers were open to climb on September 12, for the American Lighthouse Foundation’s Open Lighthouse Day.

The rest of the state’s towers stayed locked.

For a few of them the locked door is permanent, and the closest you’ll ever get is a spot on the shore.

These are the Maine lighthouses you can’t get inside.

1. Boon Island Light

Boon Island Light rises 133 feet above a bare rock pile off the York coast, which makes it the tallest lighthouse in Maine.

Nobody climbs it.

The federal government auctioned the station off in October 2014, and the winning bid came to $78,000.

The Bangor Daily News reported at the time that the tower’s interior staircase needed extensive repair.

That buyer sold the island again before the year was out.

The state’s tourism site lists Boon Island as privately owned and closed to the public.

The island sits about six miles out from Cape Neddick, so from Long Sands Beach the tower shows up as a white chip on the horizon.

Boat tours out of York run closer to the rock, though the door at the bottom of that staircase stays shut for everyone aboard.

2. Cape Elizabeth Light

Cape Elizabeth Light has two towers about 300 yards apart, and only the eastern tower still shows a light.

The state tourism office says the eastern tower and its grounds are closed to the public.

The western tower has been private property since a 1959 auction.

So the doors stay shut.

That western tower went dark decades earlier, in 1924, when the government converted twin-light stations across the country to single lights.

The public view is from the end of Two Lights Road, in the parking lot of the Lobster Shack, next to the old fog signal building.

Two Lights State Park takes its name from the station, and from inside the park you can see neither tower.

People drive out expecting to walk up to a working lighthouse.

What they get is a long look from the parking lot.

3. Whitlocks Mill Light

Whitlocks Mill Light went up on the St. Croix River in 1909, which makes it the northernmost lighthouse in Maine and the last lighthouse built in the state.

The tower is closed.

The St. Croix Historical Society has owned it since the Coast Guard signed the property over.

The keeper’s house next door belongs to a private owner.

The society’s page says those owners will let a small group walk in when they arrange the visit ahead of time.

There are no public hours and no tours.

What’s left for everybody else is a roadside picnic area on Route 1, about 2.5 miles south of Calais.

The river view from that pullout is as close as a visitor gets without a phone call first.

Calais sits against the New Brunswick border, about as far up the coast as Route 1 goes.

4. Doubling Point Light

The friends group at Doubling Point Light opens the grounds to the public every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The tower door stays shut the whole time.

You can walk the 150-foot catwalk over the marsh, put a hand on the tower, and stop there.

The keeper's house beside it is occupied, so visitors stay off it.

The road in on Arrowsic Island is privately maintained, one lane and gravel, with room for six cars at the end.

RVs, campers, and tour buses have nowhere to turn around, so the group's rules bar them.

Nobody plows the road in winter, and the group tells drivers without four-wheel or all-wheel drive to stay off it.

The catwalk out to the tower collapsed in 2023, injuring 11 people at an open house.

Volunteers rebuilt it.

The tower sits 532 feet from where it started, relocated onto a granite pier in 1899 so Kennebec River traffic could pick it up sooner.

5. Hendricks Head Light

Hendricks Head Light has marked the mouth of the Sheepscot River since 1829, and the brick tower there now dates to 1875.

Ben and Luanne Russell of Alabama bought the station in 1991 and have kept it a private residence since.

The grounds, the dwelling, and the tower are all closed.

That covers every square foot.

The public view is from West Southport Beach, across the water, with somebody's lawn in the frame.

Getting to that beach means driving Route 27 south past Boothbay Harbor and over the bridge onto Southport Island.

West Southport is about two miles further on.

The sand is good and the water is cold.

The lighthouse is somebody else's porch light now.

Out of Federal Hands

Maine lighthouses started leaving federal ownership in bulk in the early 1990s.

An act of Congress created the Maine Lights Program, with support from then-Senator George Mitchell.

The Island Institute, which handled many of those transfers, says the program moved 27 lighthouses to local groups and nonprofits.

That program became the basis for the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, which Congress passed in 2000.

Under that law a light station goes free to a government body or a nonprofit that promises to preserve it and open it to the public.

When no eligible steward applies, the General Services Administration sells it by competitive bid or auction to anybody with the money.

That's the fork.

Whitlocks Mill went to a historical society under the Maine program, and Boon Island went to the open market.

The Towers You Can Climb

Maine has more than 60 lighthouses along its coast.

The American Lighthouse Foundation's roster of towers open on September 12 listed twenty of them.

Portland Head Light makes that roster every year, and the state's lighthouse page calls it the oldest in Maine, built between 1787 and 1790.

Pemaquid Point Light in Bristol is on it too.

Castine is the new arrival.

Dyce Head Light there had never run regular tours before this summer.

Volunteers opened the tower on alternating Tuesdays from late June through the end of August.

Visitors climbed the spiral staircase and got a close look at the navigational light.