Gay lighthouse

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President John Adams approved the contract with Martin Lincoln of Hingham to build a wooden lighthouse structure with a keeper’s cottage and outbuildings. Between 1986 and 1990, various Assistant Keepers were appointed by the light’s Principal Keeper, William Waterway Marks, including the appointment of Charles Vanderhoop, Jr., son of Charles W.

Vanderhoop, Sr. (Gay Head Light Principal Keeper 1930-33).

Keeper Charles Vanderhoop, Jr. became renown for his lighthouse tours with island school children.

Early in the nineteenth century, the tower at Gay Head was lowered fourteen feet to reduce the probability of its light being obscured in fog. On at least three occasions, Vanderhoop and Attaquin helped fight fires at residences in the vicinity of Gay Head Lighthouse.

Lewis described the lighthouse in 1842 as “decayed in several places” and declared that the tower and the keeper’s house, both forty-three years old, needed to be rebuilt.

gay lighthouse

Historically accurate balusters were also fabricated and installed on the stairway landings to enhance the safety of visitors.

Just as the country started to deploy Fresnel lenses, $30,000 for a new lighthouse featuring a first-order lens was budgeted for Gay Head in 1854. During the heavy northwest snow storms that are common here in winter, it is difficult for me to get from one building to the other.

That was the foundation stone that bore the weight of the interior stairs and landings and the old Fresnel lens.

Following the move, the SAVE THE GAY HEAD LIGHT committee was disbanded, mission accomplished, and the Gay Head Light Advisory Board was formed to oversee the future needs of the building.

In June, 2016, new, child-proof railings on the brownstone balcony fabricated and installed by ViewPoint Architectural Metals replaced the original railings from 1856.

In 1922, 2,600 visitors registered at the lighthouse, while 3,614 signed the books in 1929.

  • Second Assistant: Wilbur F. Flanders (1856 – 1862), Benjamin Luce (1862 – 1864), Mathew Poole (1864 – 1872), Zadoc Athean (1872 – 1873), Frederick Lambert (1873), Thomas E. Marchant (1873 – 1874). In 1986 lighthouse tours and public lighthouse sunset gatherings once again became available to the community and visiting tourists.

    Here we were surprised by a unique and splendid spectacle. In February 1930, the fire was at the Madison homestead where one of the occupants was a ninety-four-year-old woman suffering from pneumonia. Public tours resumed under the direction of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum shortly thereafter.

    After the light was electrified, the first-order Fresnel lens was removed from Gay Head in 1952 and placed in a brick tower built on the grounds of the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society Museum in Edgartown.

    The light was most likely a “spider” lamp of several wicks in a shallow circular pan filled sperm whale oil. Richard and Joan became the Keepers for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and during President Barack Obama’s 2009 vacation on the island he and his family were given a personal tour of the lighthouse by Joan LeLacheur.

    On April 8th, 2010 keeper Skidmore entered the Lighthouse grounds and found 40 feet of split rail fence missing.

    Charles also visited island schools where spoke to children and worked on lighthouse programs with teachers

    In 1990, William Waterway Marks appointed Richard Skidmore and Joan LeLacheur as Keepers. Powered by a clockwork mechanism that had to be wound every four hours, the lens’ twenty-four flash panels revolved to produce a flash every ten seconds.

    There is not cellar to my house, and the oil is therefore kept in the wooden tower. This resulted in many tourists visiting the light via steamship and other transport systems of the period.

    On May 15, 1874, the beam pattern was changed from just flashing white to three whites and one red, to distinguish Gay Head from all other lights along the East Coast.

    1902 saw the replacement of the brick keeper’s cottage with a wooden structure after a number of unexplained illness and deaths had occurred in the brick dwelling.

    Charles Vanderhoop, Lighthouse Keeper

    Charles W.

    Vanderhoop, Sr., a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), became the first Wampanoag keeper in 1920. By the early 1850s the tower was in disrepair and again threatened by the eroding clay cliffs.

    1852 saw the Federal Lighthouse Board issue a 760-page report stating that Gay Head Lighthouse was “not second to any on the eastern coast, and should be fitted, without delay, with a first-order illuminating apparatus.”  In 1853 lighthouse keeper Samuel Flanders reported to the Vineyard Gazette:  “Gay Head is to have a new lighthouse, 5 or 6 rods back from the present one, a new dwelling house is also to be erected”.

    Of all the heavenly phenomena that I have had the good fortune to witness — borealis lights, mock suns, or meteoric showers — I have never seen anything that in mystic splendor equaled this trick of the magic lantern at Gay Head.

    Even with the powerful beacon in place, shipwrecks still occurred in the waters offshore.

    Ten years after their passing, a fifth child died at the age of fifteen.