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previous (and recently updated) post on this blog featured Portland Head Light. Here are some photos of a different Casco Bay lighthouse, Ram Island Ledge Light. The light is just east/southeast of Ram Island, visible in the foreground of the light in photos two through six below. (Cushing Island appears to the right, or southwest, of Ram Island in photos two through five.) While Ram Island appears on many modern maps, it is usually unnamed. Here is a
link to an 1893 map which names the island.
While the island itself poses no threat to navigation, dangerous and unseen ledges surround it, and these ledges caused several shipwrecks in the 19th and early 20th Century. Some of these ledges are visible in
this Google Earth photo, perhaps taken at low tide. Congress appropriated funds for the lighthouse in 1902, which workers constructed on one of the ledges in 1903-1904. (
See here and
here, for sources that recount the history of the lighthouse in great detail.) In 2010, the United States auctioned the light, which is now solar-powered, to a Maine surgeon. (
See here).
Your blogger took these photos in July, 2011.
