Ram Island Light Station, Boothbay Harbor Maine

Date added: November 22, 2024

Categories:
Maine
Lighthouse

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The Ram Island Light Station was established in 1883 as a guide to Boothbay Harbor. It is the lone occupant of shallow Ram Island.

The need for a light station that would guide shipping in and around Boothbay Harbor was clearly evident by the nature of the commerce at this busy port. As shown in the 1883-84 edition of the Maine State Year-Book Boothbay contained a broad range of mercantile establishments and manufacturers that relied upon maritime transportation. In addition, Boothbay was rapidly developing a summer tourist industry that supported no fewer than seven hotels and boarding houses. The village was linked by steamboats to Bath, Wiscasset, Augusta, Portland, and Boston. Ram Island Light Station was automated in 1965.

Site Description

Ram Island Light Station consists of a round two-stage light tower, a one-and-a-half-story frame keeper's house, an oil house, and a gable-roofed fuel house. The light tower stands on a rock outcropping, and it was originally linked to the main island by means of a long elevated walkway. The entire complex, with the exception of the oil house, was built in 1883.

The tower is composed of a tall, cylindrical quarry-faced ashlar granite base surmounted by a brick shaft which is of a smaller diameter. A wide corbelled frieze band rises to the iron walkway and railing. The polygonal lantern, which shelters a modern beacon, features clear glass panes in its upper half and iron panels below. Its iron roof is capped by a spherical ventilator. The landward side of the tower's brick stage is punctuated by a door that formerly opened off the walkway. It leads to a short spiral stair. Documentary photographs of the walkway show that it was a multi-span wooden structure supported by four iron lattice supports.

Sheathed entirely in clapboards, the L-shaped keeper's house faces northwest. The original configuration of its front elevation is partially obscured by a one-story shed-roofed addition which carries across all but a fraction of the facade. This addition has a window (now boarded shut as are all the openings) on each of its three walls. A smaller enclosure containing a door and window joins the shed to the west. Centrally located on the roof is a shed-roofed dormer. The west gable end contains three window openings, two in the first story and one in the gable peak, whereas the east end has a pair of windows. Both gables retain their plain truss-shaped bargeboards. The ell has a single window on the west side, two at the rear, and a door behind a shed-roofed porch on the east elevation. A brick flue rises through the roof at the junction of the main block and ell. The house rests on a granite foundation.

Standing to the southwest of the house is the rectangular fuel house. It has two openings on both the west and south ends and a door in the north gable end. diminutive gable-roofed structure stands at the southeast corner of this shed.

Constructed in 1898 the brick oil house is located to the northeast of the dwelling. It has a gable roof that shelters a door and a narrow rectangular vent in one end.