East Brother Light Station in Richmond, California, is hiring an innkeeper
It’s been called a “dream job,” and when this Bay Area innkeeping position was last advertised, the listing went viral. The role, managing the five-room inn on East Brother Island in San Pablo Bay, drew media attention from around the world and created an onslaught of interest from applicants. Now, the unusual and highly coveted job is available again.
It’s easy to see the appeal of earning $140,000 a year — housing and health benefits included — to live on your own private island in the San Francisco Bay, one of the most expensive and spectacularly beautiful places in the world.
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New York’s Westchester County hopes to restore Tarrytown (Sleepy Hollow) Lighthouse on the Hudson River
The projected tab to restore the Tarrytown Lighthouse on the Hudson River is about $3 million. Adjusted for inflation, the price tag is six times more than the original construction cost. The brickwork is crumbling. The cast iron structure is rusty. It needs new windows and new floors. When the restoration is complete, the story of daily life in the lighthouse will be told in a more organized way.
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North Manitou Shoal Lighthouse (MI) open for first ever tours
When you buy a lighthouse that’s been sitting vacant and falling into disrepair for more than three decades, your initial to-do list can be a bit daunting. It’s dominated by expensive and time-consuming words like weatherproofing, stabilizing, scraping and painting. But when the North Manitou Light Keepers purchased the boxy, aging structure sitting in Lake Michigan off the coast of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in a 2016 government auction, they set an ambitious goal: open the North Manitou Shoal Light to the public by the summer of 2021. They hit their deadline this summer.
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Restoration underway for historic Cockspur Island Lighthouse (GA)
Once a shining beacon for ships entering the Savannah shipping channel, the Cockspur Island Lighthouse has been long snuffed but the love for it lives on. “The community loves this place; they love the lighthouse. When the scaffolding went up and we started seeing posts about it on Facebook from folks, everything has been super positive,” Fort Pulaski National Monument Chief of Interpretation and Visitor Services, Joel Cadoff, said.
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Visitors now have the opportunity to climb the Cape Forchu Lighthouse in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
It’s been requested for years and now visitors to the Cape Forchu Lighthouse, one of Nova Scotia’s treasured landmarks, can finally climb to the top. Watch the video below for details.
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Happisburgh Lighthouse (England) announces summer open days
One of north Norfolk’s most famous landmarks has announced its summer open days. Happisburgh Lighthouse will be reopening to the public for a series of open days from July 25. The structure is the only independently operated lighthouse in the UK.
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Would you make a good lighthouse keeper? Former teacher’s book explores stories of the stoic structures
Donald S Murray gives a wry smile when he says that lighthouses have been haunting him all his life. Growing up in Scotland under the gleam of the Butt of Lewis lighthouse on the Isle of Lewis, and surrounded by islanders whose communities are intrinsically linked to the sea, he’s always had a deep understanding of their stoic presence on the edge of the landscape.
While researching his new book For the Safety of All: A Story of Scotland’s Lighthouses, Donald has also learned considerably more about the history, storytelling and the voices of the light keepers who before automation, ensured the lights stayed on.
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U.S. Lighthouse Society News is produced by the U.S. Lighthouse Society to support lighthouse preservation, history, education and research.
If you have items of interest to the lighthouse community and its supporters, please email them to Jeremy D’Entremont at Jeremy@uslhs.org
Jeremy D’Entremont is the author of more than 20 books and hundreds of articles on lighthouses and maritime history. He is the president and historian for the American Lighthouse Foundation and founder of Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouses, and he has lectured and narrated cruises throughout the Northeast and in other regions. He is also the producer and host of the U.S. Lighthouse Society podcast, “Light Hearted.” He can be emailed at Jeremy@uslhs.org