Campobello Island is in southwestern New Brunswick, Canada, near the border with Maine. With trade, fishing, and shipbuilding flourishing on Campobello in the 1820s, it was decided that a lighthouse was needed. The lighthouse and the other station buildings were constructed in 1829 on a tiny island just offshore, accessible by land only at low tide. The 51-foot tower is one of the oldest surviving wooden lighthouses in North America.
The station remained staffed with resident keepers until its automation in 1986. A group called the Friends of the Head Harbour Lightstation was formed in 2000 to preserve the site and its history. Ilana Grallert is on the board of the Friends of the Head Harbour Lightstation and performs all kinds of functions for the group, as you’ll hear. Ilana was formerly a processing specialist at the special collections library of Dartmouth College.
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U.S. Lighthouse Society Historian Jeremy D’Entremont is the author of 24 books and hundreds of articles on lighthouses and maritime history. He is a past president of 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’s weekly podcast, “Light Hearted.” He can be emailed at Jeremy@uslhs.org