Mystic Seaport Lighthouse
Stonington
Our visit to Mystic Seaport is here.
As with most of these lighthouse pages within this particular section of the website, I’m simply going to cut and paste information from Lighthouse Friends and only add to it if I have something to add. In this case, I’m only adding the link above to my visit up the thing.
The Connecticut coast has many small inlets and harbors, and such historic towns as Mystic, New London, Groton, and Stonington were havens for classic tall sailing ships during the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, the town of Mystic has taken the lead in restoring and exhibiting its old maritime history, especially at a hugely popular site along its waterfront, the Mystic Seaport Museum. Besides a number of tall, wooden sailing and whaling ships from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the museum has exhibits about rope making, boatbuilding, barrelmaking, and anything else related to a working maritime community of that time. There is also a gift shop, planetarium, and art gallery. The town of Mystic itself has many small shops and, of course, Mystic Pizza.
The small wooden lighthouse at the westernmost point of the Seaport, two miles upriver from Noank, was constructed in 1966 but has never been an official aid to navigation. Rather, it is a replica of the current Brant Point Lighthouse in Nantucket that was built in 1901. The Brant Point Light Station was the second to be built in New England, but numerous towers have stood on or near the point over the years.
Mystic Seaport’s replica does have a genuine piece of lighthouse history – a working fourth-order Fresnel lens in its lantern room on loan from the Coast Guard.
For years, the interior of the Mystic Seaport’s lighthouse was closed to the public, until in July of 2008, an exhibit called Sentinels of the Sea was opened inside the tower.
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