The Lost Light at Shinnecock

On December 23, 1948, two days before Christmas, the Shinnecock Lighthouse, which towered nearly 170 feet over Ponquogue Point in Hampton Bays, fell to the earth with a crash that was reportedly heard and felt some three miles away. A group of spectators braved the cold temperatures to watch a giant fall under a clear, blue sky on snow-packed ground.

The Shinnecock Lighthouse, also known as the Ponquogue Lighthouse and the Great West Bay Light, was commissioned in 1853 when the first Lighthouse Board determined that a light was needed in the 67-mile span between the Fire Island and Montauk Point lighthouses. It was decided that Great West Bay, now known as Shinnecock Bay, was the perfect location.

Construction of the lighthouse began in 1857. The foundation, which was made from a mixture of concrete, pine logs, grillwork and blocks, was more than 10 feet deep to ensure sturdiness during the most severe storms. The Shinnecock Lighthouse withstood the 1938 hurricane after standing for 80 years, while the skeletal light tower that replaced the original light in 1931 was completely destroyed in the storm.

More than 800,000 bricks were used to construct the tower. Masons built it brick by brick, using pine cut from nearby woods that they fashioned into scaffolding that was built up as work progressed.

A First Order Fresnel fixed lens — one with a steady beam of light that did not blink or flash — was put into place toward the end of construction, and the light was lit for the first time by keeper Charles A. Conley on January 1, 1858. Combined with the Fire Island and Montauk lights, a 110-mile portion of the East Coast was now safe for navigation.

While the addition of the lighthouse at Great West Bay was a godsend for mariners along this portion of the coast, in the first few months after its erection, it inadvertently caused one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of the East End.

The 1,445-ton John Milton, with its 33-man crew, was making its way back to New York after a 15-month voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco, and after stopping off in Peru to pick up a load of guano, it headed home, unaware that a new lighthouse stood between the established lights at Fire Island and Montauk. Ship-to-shore communication was nonexistent in 1858, as was ship-to-ship communication with the exception of “gams,” when two passing whaling ships would meet on the open ocean and tie up to exchange news, mail, food and drink.

Mistaking the Shinnecock Lighthouse for the Montauk Light, Captain Ephraim Harding headed north, thinking he was heading into open water by widely rounding Montauk Point. Instead, he crashed on the rocks several miles west of the Montauk Light on February 19, 1858. All on board perished. A monument to the sailors lost on the John Milton is located in the South End Burying Ground in East Hampton.

For the next 73 years, the Shinnecock Lighthouse helped guide mariners along the South Fork’s coast. It had many keepers and was routinely painted and updated. According to a memoir by Alice Thomas, whose father, George, was the last keeper of the Shinnecock Lighthouse, every day was a busy one: “Work for the keepers was never ending. Each morning at 8 a.m., the three keepers assembled in the hallway and proceeded up the tower, usually carrying a scuttle of coal, a 5-gallon can of kerosene or other supplies. The ‘light’ was a lantern fueled by kerosene, and the wick had to be trimmed and bottom filled [with fuel]. All glass and brass in the lantern room was polished daily.”

Early photographs and postcards depicting the lighthouse show pastoral scenes with horses and cattle grazing in the fenced-in area around the light and the keepers’ dwellings.

The hamlet, known then as Good Ground, expanded and grew around the lighthouse, and, in February 1922, its name was changed to Hampton Bays.

In 1931, due to advances in technology, the lighthouse was decommissioned by the federal government. Just after the sun came up on August 1, keeper George Thomas extinguished the light for good.

The fate of the lighthouse was to hang in the balance for years. According to Helen Wetterau’s “Good Ground Remembered,” during the 1930s, articles appeared from time to time in the Hampton Bays News suggesting uses for the defunct lighthouse. U.S. Representative Robert L. Bacon, the congressman representing New York’s 1st District between 1923 and 1938, suggested that ownership be transferred to the Town of Southampton for a park or historical site. In 1934, the federal government offered the town a five-year lease for the lighthouse for $1, on the condition that the building and property be maintained by the town, and that the lease could be revoked at any time. The Town Board rejected the proposal.

In 1940, the New York district office of the U.S. Coast Guard inspected the lighthouse and came to the conclusion that it “was in a dangerous condition and demolition was highly advisable.” An independent engineering firm, the Alphons Custodis Chimney Construction Company, was brought in to inspect the building and its findings were not as dire as the Coast Guard’s. They deemed the light “safe and stable” and suggested a few repairs that would have cost a few thousand dollars. A letter-writing campaign was begun as part of a last-ditch effort to save the lighthouse, and editorials and articles published in local newspapers began voicing pleas for preservation — all to no avail.

An editorial published in the March 1, 1940, issue of the Hampton Bays News stated, “There was some agitating in the Southampton Town Board to make the surrounding ten acres into a park, but economy prevailed over historical interest.”

According to accounts in several publications, it took the Vim Demolition and Salvage Company two weeks to break through the concrete and brick to get to the pine timber that served as the lighthouse’s frame. It was reported in the August 1951 issue of Popular Mechanics, in an article titled “Death of a Lighthouse,” that “along one side of the lighthouse, they cut a hole six feet high, shoring up the building with timbers. Then logs and brush were packed into the hole, soaked with gasoline and ignited. When the timbers burned through, the lighthouse toppled in exactly the right direction.”

John H. Sutter of the Hampton Bays News wrote of the demolition, “Ellsworth Holland, 88 years of age, lit the fire. There were tears in the eyes of many old timers who stood watching the old landmark pass away, powerless to save the old building. We did our best to save it, but in vain. Thus passes a landmark that will be missed by thousands ashore and by those who still used the old Ponquogue Lighthouse as a guide to bring them safely to land from the sea.”

Nothing remains of the lighthouse tower. Looking at the grounds of Coast Guard Station Shinnecock today, one would never know that a red brick tower, which soared 170 feet into the air, once stood there. As memories and photographs fade, a historical marker provides the only testimony that the Shinnecock Lighthouse once stood as a beacon for mariners — and a community.

The marker reads: “Shinnecock Lighthouse stood here from 1858 until 1948. The 168-foot red brick tower was among the tallest on the East Coast. Its light was visible 18 miles at sea. Town of Southampton, 2012.”