>> Narrator: Lighthouses cut the sky with a shaft of light to guide distant wanderers to safety. Technological and engineering masterpieces, their greatest achievement may be their haunting beauty. Now, "Lighthouses" on<i> Modern</i> <i> Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00"> [Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS]</font> >> Narrator: At the junction of opposing forces-- land and sea... light and dark... safety and peril... calm and chaos... sits a lighthouse. Perched solidly on the very precipice of ruin, lighthouses offer all a guidepost to safe passage... sending out a beacon of light whose fundamental symbolism is so evocative, it sometimes overshadows the structures themselves. Despite ever-advancing technology that threatens to make them obsolete, lighthouses continue to serve as aids to navigation. Roughly 800 still stand in the United States alone. Their resiliency is testimony to the marvel of their construction and the power of their appeal. >> Jeremy D'Entremont: I think of it as like a primal resonance of the image of a light flashing in the darkness, that guiding light in the darkness or in a storm that is only there for one purpose. >> Wayne Wheeler: They're the antithesis of the city. The city with the sirens and the jackhammers going off and all of the noise and the stress. The lighthouse is out there in a quiet area with a lap of wave and the caw of a gull. >> Narrator: Lighthouses flash their beacons from the four corners of the United States, plus Alaska and Hawaii. They blink along the entire coast of the Great Lakes. They stand firm amidst roiling surf. They have even floated, as lightships, over the most dangerous shoals. They keep sentinel anywhere earth, air and water conspire to create havoc. >> Loretta Brandon: The meaning of lighthouses is found in the sacred trust that existed between the lighthouse keeper and those who traveled on the water. >> Walter Fanning: They serve the purpose of telling you where you are in the world. >> Narrator: It's a purpose they have served since ancient times. Lighthouses have probably existed in some form or another since humans began negotiating the waterways. >> Wheeler: We can speculate that probably some of the first lighthouses or aids to navigation were fires on a cliff, a headland or a beach, showing very early man the way back to safe harbor after having been out fishing, or perhaps doing some sort of trade with neighbors. The first mention of lighthouses actually is as early as Homer, talking about pillars of fire lighting the way into the Port of Athens. >> Narrator: One of the greatest lighthouses was also one of the earliest. The Pharos of Alexandria in Egypt was completed by the Romans around 280 BC. It may have soared 450 feet, with a massive square base, octagonal middle section and a cylindrical tower. A ramp in the center probably enabled animals or slaves to haul fuel to the top of the tower, but in this dangerous time, the lighthouse was also a defense. >> Wheeler: As the state of Egypt was attacked by various invading armies, it was damaged, badly damaged. It was damaged by earthquakes over the years, and eventually, in 1340, was completely felled. What was left was completely felled by a massive earthquake. >> Narrator: The Pharos of Alexandria is hailed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but it may not be the only lighthouse so recognized. >> Wheeler: There's another one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, the Colossus at Rhodes, which was a metal statue, couple of hundred feet high, and there is speculation that they either had a burning fire in the eyes or that this statue held a cup in an upraised hand, which had a burning fire in it. >> Narrator: The Romans also built more modest lighthouses in the far-flung reaches of their empire. One survives in ruins at Dover Castle in England. These days, the ancient lighthouse at Dover has been joined by a couple of modern upstarts to guide ships, including hovercrabp. Over a thousand years after the construction of the ancient Dover Lighthouse, a dangerous eddystone reef off the coast of Plymouth, England would witness a great technological leap forward for lighthouses. For the first time, a lighthouse would be built essentially in water. >> Wheeler: There was a man by the name of Henry Winstanley who was sort of a P.T. Barnum of his day. Winstanley was not an architect and he wasn't an engineer, but he fashioned a lighthouse upon the eddystone-- a very difficult task. This is 1696. Uh, everything is taken out there by sailing vessel. >> Narrator: Out upon the slippery, wet rock with nothing but hand tools, Henry Winstanley set about building an 80-foot- Although his lighthouse managed to survive the winter, Winstanley tore it down and built a stronger one that spring. >> Wheeler: A lighthouse that was 40 feet in diameter and 120 feet high, and this one lasted until 1704. In that year, Henry and workmen and a relief keeper were in Plymouth, and a storm struck. >> Narrator: Winstanley and his men were in the lighthouse. By the next morning, lighthouse and men, including Winstanley, were gone. The next lighthouse on Eddystone Rock was built by ship's carpenters out of smooth wood, curved to deflect the crash of waves, but one element of Winstanley's lighthouse would be revived. >> Wheeler: Both of these lighthouses were the first to have an enclosed lantern room. Henry Winstanley had 60 one- pound candles as an illuminant in his lantern room. >> Narrator: Glass in the lantern room protected the light without hiding it, so it could be seen in all weather. Cleaner and more efficient fuels such as candles and oil replaced wood and tar as illuminants. In 1754, the latest Eddystone Lighthouse burned down and authorities commissioned a new structure. >> Wheeler: John Smeaton was an engineer and an architect, and he constructed the first wave- swept lighthouse in the world out of granite. The Smeaton Lighthouse tower has a taper to it, a very nice taper, starting wide at the base, of course, and then working its way up, and then just under the lantern room, it flares out, and so any water that would run up the side would be forced away from the lantern room of the lighthouse. >> Narrator: Because of climate changes, the Eddystone Rocks were now submerged under the surf. Smeaton's lighthouse sat essentially in open seas. The lighthouse was made up of giant jigsaw blocks which held together like gripping hands, using the force of waves to compress the structure. This dovetailed construction was very strong. >> Wheeler: In this manner, when the seas hit this structure, it actually causes this monolith to be stronger. >> Narrator: Open-sea lighthouses built into rocks were a marvel of construction that eventually found their way across the Atlantic. Up next: America's most famous open-sea lighthouse, Minot's Ledge Lighthouse, perched for nearly 150 years atop one of America's most dangerous rocks. "Lighthouses" will return on <i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> Announcer: We now return to "Lighthouses" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> Narrator: Even before John Smeaton's remarkable lighthouse rose from the rocks of Plymouth, England, fires, most likely lanterns hoisted on sticks, were burning along the shores of Plymouth, Massachusetts and other villages in the New World. In 1716, America's first official lighthouse was built, and Boston Light still marks the entrance to Boston Harbor at Little Brewster Island. The original lighthouse was destroyed during the Revolutionary War, but was rebuilt in 1783. The 75-foot rubblestone tower was raised to its current height of 89 feet in 1859. >> Rick Himelrick: The current second-order Fresnel lens that was put up there in 1859, and, uh, electricity didn't come out to the island until 1948, after World War II, so... >> Narrator: Boston needed a lighthouse because of the treacherous seas and high volume of trade. >> Himelrick: A lot of people don't realize that Boston was the hub for the colonies for a lot of years, up until the mid- 1800s. Uh, most of the shipping traffic came through Boston. In my belief, that if they didn't put this lighthouse here, and make Boston Harbor safe for ships to come in and out of, it wouldn't have grown to be, as they called it back then, the "Hub of the Universe." >> Narrator: Rick Himelrick is the lighthouse keeper at Little Brewster Island. He shares his duty with two other Coast Guard officers who rotate shifts. >> Himelrick: Well, you know, I've got the light to take care of. Uh, I've got the buildings and the grounds and this time of year, most of my energies go into taking care of the buildings and grounds and making the place presentable for tours, and of course, taking care of the lens and the light itself. Uh, that demands about an hour or better every day of my time; about a four-hour stint once during the week, where I've got to completely oil it, clean it and everything. >> Narrator: Their tasks do not differ markedly from keepers of the past, though they no longer carry fuel up the tower nor manually ring a fog bell or fire fog cannons, nor are they isolated for months at a time, though the weather still gets pretty nasty on Little Brewster Island. >> Himelrick: Northeasters-- I mean, it gets kicking. You'll have 20-foot waves right out off the east end of the island here. We'll have waves breaking against the back of the house and stuff all night long. I feel totally blessed, really, is the only way I can describe it, to be entrusted with this, okay? That's the way I approach it. You know, the government, the public, has entrusted me to take care of a national treasure. >> Narrator: Within sight of the Boston station is Minot's Ledge, near Cohasset, Massachusetts, a direct descendent of John Smeaton's dovetailed lighthouse in England. Too many wrecks off the coast prompted construction of a lighthouse here that is embedded into the rocky shoal roughly ten feet below high tide, in the middle of some of the roughest seas along any shore. >> Wayne Wheeler: And they realized they had to build something out there, so the first attempt was a pile structure, cast-iron piles-- there were nine of them, a center and eight around the perimeter-- that were let into this Minot's Ledge. Now, this ledge is below water at high water, so they had to work at low water, and they had to drill in the 1849, 1850 era, they had to drill by hand, auger into this ledge to put these piles, which were tall legs, and then a cottage-type structure on top. >> D'Entremont: They thought that it would work, uh, because they thought the waves would just sweep right through that structure and not crash against it and do any serious damage to it, but of course, unfortunately, they were proven wrong. >> Narrator: In April 1851, a nor'easter blew in while two lightkeepers assistants were manning the lighthouse. >> Wheeler: The people of Cohasset could hear the bell ringing out there. The next morning, when they looked out, there was no more Minot's Ledge. It had been swept right off the ledge. >> Narrator: Both assistants died in the disaster. Still, a lighthouse was needed and construction of a new lighthouse began under the direction of B.S. Alexander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A monolithic granite tower was planned, combining some of Smeaton's jigsaw puzzle design with the tapered blocks characteristic of a Roman arch. Like eddystone before it, this structure uses compression to become stronger as waves hit. Alexander prepared the site by removing the old iron stumps from the previous lighthouse and constructing a new iron framework for the ledge. Work was difficult as the rocks were often just underwater and waves frequently swept men into the sea. Concrete blocks, fashioned by stonecutters on shore, were then hauled out to the ledge and built up with masonry to create the 89-foot tower. Under such conditions, it took the builders five years to finish the tower. >> D'Entremont: I'm completely amazed, astounded at the audacity of the builders of that lighthouse just to think that they could build a structure like that, a massive granite lighthouse on a ledge that's submerged except at low tide. I think it's absolutely phenomenal and something that certainly nobody would try today. Uh, the costs would be phenomenal. The cost was high in those days. It was one of the most expensive lighthouses built. >> Narrator: With its 22-foot bronze lantern for a hat, the lighthouse topped out at 112 feet, shining its beacon 15 miles out to sea for the first time on November 15, 1860. Thirty feet in diameter at the base, and tapering to 14 feet below the lantern, the lower 40 feet of the tower was essentially solid rock. Above were brick-lined rooms for storage, kitchen and keeper's quarters. Waves occasionally top the lantern room at Minot's Ledge, as blizzards and hurricanes send waves crashing against the tower, but the lighthouse just braces, and lets the waves roll off its back, as it has for nearly 150 years. Locally, people remember Minot's Ledge Lighthouse for a quirk of its beacon. All lighthouses have a signature of blinking or not blinking known as a "characteristic." Since 1894, Minot's Ledge light has had the most famous characteristic of any lighthouse in America. >> Ken Black: It's, "One. One, two, three, four. One, two, three. One, four, three." And it keeps repeating that, repeating that. And it's called the lover's light-- the lovers on the beach looking at the lighthouse flashing one, "I," four, "l-o-v-e," three, "y-o-u." >> Wheeler: So the Coast Guard advertised that they were going to get rid of this. They were going to change this characteristic. The word got out to the population. The hue and cry in the Boston papers, to the mayor of Boston, to the Coast Guard Admiral, to their congressmen, to their senators, was incredible. "You can't change that characteristic. That's the 'I love you' characteristic." You know, that's the "I Love You" light, they called it, and people would write in and say, "Well, my honey and I, we used to go down to the shore and look out, and we'd spark." Whatever sparking is, you know, and, give her a little kiss on the cheek. >> Narrator: Bowing to pressure, the Coast Guard kept the Minot's Ledge characteristic 1-4-3, once again making the shores along Cohasset safe for lovers, but the "I love you" story illuminates the single most important aspect of any lighthouse: its light. Next: lights and lenses. "Lighthouses" will return on <i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> Narrator: We now return to "Lighthouses" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> Light is a revelation in all its aspects along a coast. The sun is the greatest lighthouse, and daylight its characteristic. Between the dawn rays that first tinge the water, to the last light that bathes the skies, the sun dances on waves, penetrates the seas and darts between the clouds. But nighttime belongs to a lighthouse. The most important feature of any lighthouse is its light, the beacon that broadcasts its message to ships at sea. Though early illuminants included wood, coal and candles, most of these options had already been abandoned by the early 19th century. Oil had become the fuel of choice, and wells of oil with solid wicks were used, but oil was often expensive and sooty. Whale oil dominated, but when the price skyrocketed in the 1840s, other options were considered. >> Wheeler: They tried porpoise oil, olive oil, canola oil. By the end of the 1850s, they had settled on lard oil, uh, pig lard oil-- any kind of lard, and it came in big white chunks. The keepers had to melt the oil before they put it in the lamp, and if you were in New England was February, you had to really hustle to get up that staircase before that oil congealed, and get it into your lamps. >> Narrator: There had to be a better way. When Swiss scientist Aime Argand accidentally passed a broken beaker over an open fire, he saw the flame shoot up. Better air flow was created due to the glass chimney he had accidentally discovered. In the center of Argand's new lamp was a circular cloth wick, which burned evenly. Eventually wicks inside wicks made the process more efficient. In the early 1900s, another lamp improved things even further. >> Wheeler: The IOV is an incandescent oil vapor lamp-- I-O-V-- and it takes kerosene, vaporizes it onto a mantle, a cloth mantle very much like a Coleman stove you'd use in camping, and it burns very hot, very efficient and actually held off electricity in many light stations for many years, but electricity was coming in and it started to come in after the turn of the century. Why the IOV held sway for so long is that there weren't electric lines out to these remote light stations, even on the coast, even outside of town sometimes, let alone island stations. So it was easier to use the IOV than to string an electric line out to these stations. >> Narrator: Illuminants generate the light in a lighthouse, but a lens is needed to broadcast that light so that it can be seen from great distances. Glass panels, originally used on Henry Winstanley's Eddystone Lighthouse to protect the fire from the elements, led to experiments with glass reflectors. People had used glass mirrors to reflect light for thousands of years, but by the 18th century, lighthouses were adopting the catoptric system, in which parabolic reflectors-- mirrors molded into parabolas behind lights-- created a single, focused beam even brighter than the original light. Though the catoptric system was an improvement, the dioptric system invented by Augustin- Jean Fresnel, a French physicist, was a breakthrough. Fresnel created an elegant drum of glass that set down around the light source. >> Black: If you look at the lens, it has a band, a center band is a magnifying band called a dioptric, and that is pure simple magnification, nothing else. Then upper and lower, on the upper and lower sides of that, there's what they call catadioptrics, and they're prisms, and they're made into a certain angle and then that prism takes and redirects the light back to form, in the lens, to form a perfectly solid bar. >> Narrator: Lenses of glass, used in spectacles as early as the 15th century, were originally employed to magnify images. Fresnel lenses magnify, but also bend and focus a specific beam of light that is passed through them. Fresnel lenses for lighthouses come in several different sizes, from massive first order lenses 36.2 inches in radius, to modest 5.9 inch radius sixth order lenses, plus a middle-sized 3h order lens at 14.7 inches radius. The most common lighthouse lens is the fourth order. First order lenses can broadcast light over 20 miles, but their ability to throw light depends on more than size. >> Black: You can only see so far to the horizon, so, the higher the lighthouse was, the further it could be seen because it would extend over the horizon. Every lighthouse would have the distance it could be seen, and this was determined by the height of the lighthouse, the light, and by the height of the observer-- we can't forget him-- and the height of the observer being 15 feet, so that would be equivalent to X miles that this could be seen, and the sailor could, when the light first popped over the horizon, get an indication of where he might be. >> Narrator: Fresnel lenses also helped create new characteristics for lighthouses. Bulls-eyes built into the dioptric portion of the Fresnel lens changed the light from a fixed beam into a light that regularly focused into a pencil beam when rotated. The light could be constant, blink on and off, get brighter, or even change color. Fresnel lenses increase the luminous intensity, or candlepower, of light and provide lighthouses with signature characteristics that aid identification. Mariners have a visual guide to tell them either where they are or where danger is. A characteristic can tell them which lighthouse they are looking at and what its purpose is. Since a lighthouse is usually nearest lighthouse neighbor, a knowledgeable mariner can use a technique called triangulation to determine his location based on triangle formed by the two lighthouses and his position. Fresnel lenses, bending and broadcasting light, turning on their clockwork rotators, are the very soul of a lighthouse... mesmerizing in their crystal beauty. But lighthouses have never been only about broadcasting light. A lighthouse, after all, has to work in the densest fog. How? Through sound. Some lighthouse keepers were originally required to fire cannons to alert ships to their presence in pea soup. Lighthouse keepers were also required to ring bells, some so large, they weighed a ton. At the turn of the last century, compressed air fog signals, which could be heard up to eight nautical miles away, replaced the old bells. Bells, foghorns and beacons are the basic elements of the familiar sea cliff lighthouse tower, but these elements can be found on lighthouses of all shapes and sizes, including lighthouses that actually float. Up next: Lightships. "Lighthouses" will return on <i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> Narrator: We now return to "Lighthouses" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> The image of the lighthouse as a proud tower anchored on a bluff by the sea is so ingrained in our consciousness that to entertain any other concept is almost unimaginable, but floating lighthouses guarded our shores as lightships for over a century. >> Frederic L. Thompson: Lightships were really put in places where you couldn't practically build a lighthouse. Also, the ships can navigate by a lightship without worrying about running aground off it. Um, where a lighthouse certainly is built right on a piece of rock, a lightship, uh, is in many times, was a point of navigation, a place to aim for. >> Narrator: Lightships began in 18th century England and involved hanging a lantern or other light source to the top of the mast, with the ship anchored to a single spot. Giant mushroom-shaped anchors were employed, but lightships still managed to get pulled off their station during fierce storms. >> Thompson: And some got knocked off, uh, lost their anchors and they were dragged as far as, uh, you know, 800 miles off station, but for the most part, those anchors held them pretty solidly. >> Narrator: By the 19th century, the concept was put to good use in America, particularly off the coast of Cape Cod. >> Thompson: Cape Cod was a very treacherous area. There were a lot of shifting sand shoals. Uh, from one moment to the next you didn't know whether a ship could get over a certain sandbar or not, and so there had to be a lot of lightships to, uh, to guide the ships, uh, from New York City and around Cape Cod, into Boston and points north. Uh, so they had the most-most lightships of any location in the entire country. >> Ken Black: The average lightship had a crew of 16 people and one officer. A chief warrant officer usually was the captain, and, uh, one-third of that crew would be ashore at all times. >> Narrator: Lightship duty was extremely difficult. >> Thompson: There'd have to be a man out on a deck, uh, ringing, tolling a fog signal, uh, notifying any possible passing vessel that, uh, they were near a shoal or they were... this was a point of navigation, and this could be at 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, in the middle of January, and they'd have to pound this light, uh, this fog signal once every ten seconds all night long. So you can imagine that, uh, what kind of duty that was at 20 degrees below zero with a gale blowing outside, and you're just standing there out on an open deck, pounding away on a fog bell. >> Narrator: Because of their inaccessible location off the coast, lightships performed their important function in virtual anonymity. Almost as ignored as the poor lightships, lighthouses that work large lakes and rivers also challenge the traditional concept of the seaside lighthouse. In fact, the Great Lakes are home to literally hundreds of lighthouses. >> Loretta A. Brandon: In the 1850s, '60s and '70s, there was a flurry of shipping trade, more ships going between Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and that's when the Great Lakes lighthouses, uh, were needed. >> Narrator: Hundreds of short, squat lighthouses popped up along the Great Lakes, not to warn ships of dangerous rocks, but to guide them to port. >> Brandon: In the Great Lakes, the, uh, focal plane of most of those lights is about 16 to 18 miles out into the lake, and it really didn't need to be as-as tall as the East Coast lighthouses. >> Narrator: Loretta Brandon grew up in one of those lighthouses, at Presque Isle in Erie, Pennsylvania, on a peninsula surrounded by woods and lake. >> Brandon: The lighthouse was very secluded, and I was an only child, so as a result, I, uh, turned to my pets for, uh, friendship and for companionship. I made friends with some of the animals that came to the door. We had a pet deer, we had a pet snake, we had a pet raccoon. In the afternoon, my father would come home from work about 2:30 in the afternoon, and he would go into the den and lay down on the daybed for a nap, and the deer would curl around his head on the pillow, just to be close to him while he napped, and the deer would also take an afternoon nap. >> Narrator: If lightships and squat, freshwater lighthouses clash with the traditional imagery of the proud seaside tower, the reality of erosion has literally undermined it. Lighthouses have been moved, rebuilt and replaced due to the ever-shifting tides. In fact, the survival of Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina was a literal cliff-hanger. >> Cheryl Shelton-Roberts: The story goes that Alexander Hamilton was only 17 years old when he was passing by in a ship, the<i> Thunderbolt,</i> and the ship came upon hard times and caught on fire, and he almost sank. >> Narrator: As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton appropriated funds for a lighthouse at Hatteras, which became known as "Mr. Hamilton's Light." Unfortunately, the station was built on a barrier reef that has continually eroded. >> Shelton-Roberts: Starting in the 1930s, sandbags and groins, which are low-profile walls built perpendicular to the shore intended to build up sand along the beach, were installed. However, these were short-term protection measures, and the 1,600 feet of beach that that light once enjoyed as a buffer from the high tide dwindled to 120 feet in 1997. >> Narrator: The only way to save the lighthouse was to move it. In 1998, Congress voted $12 million to pay for the relocation 2,900 feet southwest of the original site. Excavation began around the base of the lighthouse. The foundation was removed and weight shifted to temporary support. >> Shelton-Roberts: As they got more stone out, they kept supporting the lighthouse with more and more of the shoring towers until the lighthouse was sitting completely on these shoring towers, which had hydraulic jacks in them. >> Narrator: The entire lighthouse tower was then hydraulically jacked up out of its old foundation to begin the process of its long move. The engineering team was able to support the lighthouse on roll jacks which sent it inching along at a rate of over 100 feet a day. 23 days later, the lighthouse was placed on a brand-new foundation by International Chimney Corporation. It might have been easier to tear the lighthouse down, but that was not an option for its saviors. >> Shelton-Roberts: This lighthouse was not born with its history. It has grown its history. It has seen hundreds of storms, thousands of shipwrecks, two world wars, prowling U-boats, transferred to the United States Coast Guard, transferred to the Parks Service. It is the icon of this nation's rich maritime heritage, and its historic legacy continues as the American people made a commitment to preserve their past, and that historic legacy is also continuing as a window to the past or which future generations can look. >> Narrator: Lighthouses find themselves buffeted by more than just encroaching seas these days. New technology has produced cheaper, better aids to navigation. Up next: lighthouses become an endangered species. >> Narrator: We now return to "Lighthouses" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> When President Roosevelt ordered the Coast Guard to take over jurisdiction of the lighthouse service in 1939, the process of automating lighthouses was already underway. >> Wheeler: In 1910, a Swedish scientist invented a sun relay. It was an apparatus that, using different types of metal, could open and close a valve and allow acetylene to flow, so that during the daytime, the light was off, and during the evening or very dark, inclement weather, the light came on. This allowed, even back in the teens of the last century, the lighthouse service to automate less important lighthouses. >> Black: And now we have what we call a fog detector, and this is an electronic device that spelled the death knell of the lighthouse keeper, because there was no way for the lighthouse to determine when the fog came in except to have a man. >> Narrator: Solar panels were installed in some lighthouses, where they collected energy from the sun and stored it in batteries that supplied the lighthouse with power at night. Clearly, lighthouse keepers were expensive, obsolete and expendable. It was just a matter of time before all the lighthouses in America would be automated, and lighthouse keepers would be out of a job. Even the primary function of the lighthouses themselves was being usurped by better, more efficient technology. Radio transmissions provided two-way ship-to-shore communication. Radar, and later, global positioning systems would use satellite technology to allow even the smallest ships to locate themselves anywhere in the world. LORAN devices broadcast distress signals, again using satellite technology, so that rescue crews can pick up their signals in minutes. Even the humble buoys, floating markers that need minimal maintenance and now automated, were much cheaper than the grand, but rickety towers. Lighthouses seemed old- fashioned, low-tech, and in some cases, unnecessary. The Coast Guard couldn't afford to maintain the lighthouses it didn't need, and began shutting some down. Ironically, as lighthouse keepers and their families started disappearing, some people began to acknowledge their lonely task. In the 1930s, an airplane pilot who had gratefully used a lighthouse to orient himself in a fog began delivering Christmas bundles to remote lighthouse keepers and their families as a gesture of thanks. Edward Rowe Snow, an historian and lighthouse lover from New England, took over the job of "Flying Santa" in the late 1930s and continued delivering packages for over 40 years, from Maine to California. >> Dorothy Snow Bicknell: My mother went with him every year. I went with him every year from the time I was born until I got married, and then my husband went one year and that was sufficient, but it was just a wonderful thing to do. A few weeks before Christmas, the cellar of the house would become Santa's workshop. We'd clear the Ping-Pong table off, and we had brown wrapping paper, we had string, we had cigars and cigarettes when they were okay for you, pen and pencil sets, balloons, razor blades, candy, pocket edition books, and always there was a copy of my dad's latest book with a card inside that said "We have received your package," so that he would know how successful he was with the drops. >> Narrator: Despite visits from Santa Claus, the elimination of lighthouse keepers continued unabated. In 1989, the Coast Guard planned to automate Boston Light, the last manned lighthouse left in America. After a public groundswell of protest, it became instead the only lighthouse in America that has not been automated. Rick Himelrick and his colleagues survive as a tribute to all the lighthouse keepers who came before them. >> Himelrick: I'm the only one left, officially. There are a lot of people that are caretakers, and stuff, that the Coast Guard, they've got this program where we turn lights over to private organizations. Real good program. It's win-win, because you've got these, you know... some people refer to them as America's castles, okay-- the lighthouses-- and so you've got these private organizations that want to step up to the plate, and it's a great value for the taxpayers, because now, the Coast Guard, which, you know, we're a government organization, we don't have to maintain the buildings, we just maintain the optic. >> Narrator: Some retired lighthouses have found a second life. They've been cleaned up, painted and put to new uses by local citizens and saviors like Walter Fanning. >> Fanning: My grandfather was transferred from Yorba Buena Island to the lighthouse on East Brother Island and we visited there frequently. He was keeper there from 1914 to 1921, and in 1980, a group proposed to restore East Brother Island, which had been my grandfather's lighthouse, so I joined that group, and we worked there in the restoration from February, 1980 until October 1980, when the work was completed, and the lighthouse became a bed and breakfast inn. >> Narrator: Charlotte Johnson is a lighthouse advocate, too. She helped spearhead an effort to save the Rose Island Lighthouse in Newport, Rhode Island. >> Johnson: The Rose Island Lighthouse operated for a hundred years, from January 20, 1870, and it was lit for a hundred years. It was in 1970 when it was taken off the light lists. It was about 1983, '84 when the Federal Government declared it surplus a second time, and that's when the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation was formed. A group of citizens who wanted to see this lighthouse brought back to its former glory formed a nonprofit group, and raised the funds independently, and we ended up getting a whole series of permits for the restoration of the building, and it was officially opened and re-lit in 1993. So we've, uh... we're very, very proud of this accomplishment, and it's not just a historic building. It's also an environmental education center here. >> Narrator: Matt Marcinek of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources at Presque Isle State Park, who now lives and works in the lighthouse, is another lighthouse custodian. >> Marcinek: We acquired it from the Federal Government as excess historic property. So what our role will be is, is working with historians, our State Historical and Museum Commission, National Park Service. We'll continue with the restoration efforts of the lighthouse so that the historical integrity can remain. >> Narrator: Lighthouses have not become merely anachronistic curiosities, of interest only to historic preservationists. Unlike lighthouse keepers, most of them continue their work. >> Marcinek: Nowadays we have excellent charts, there's GPS, there's LORAN, but the boaters and the ship captains need a little bit more, so we have aids to navigation such as lighthouses, lighted buoys, foghorns, radio signals. So a good ship captain will never rely on one single source for navigation. >> D'Entremont: There's nothing wrong with redundancy. I mean, systems can fail. I think a lot of people would miss that light. A lot of navigators, a lot of mariners out there would be pretty unhappy if we took away their lighthouses. >> Narrator: Lighthouses have finally relinquished their role as primary aids to navigation. In doing so, they have shown us that they have always fundamentally meant more. Having survived harsh weather and dark skies, crushing waves and erosion... even advancing technology and obsolescence... lighthouses continue to blink their message of hope to mariners, artists, lovers, wanderers of all stripes who occasionally find themselves lost in a chaotic world. >> Thompson: It's something that's solid, something that is out there to help you that is going to be there. Under the worst conditions, they work the best, and that's their job. That's why they were put on this earth, and there's something real nice about that, especially now, when things are moving pretty fast, to reflect on something that was solid, couldn't be moved and was out there to protect people and their lives. >> Narrator: After sending us messages of hope for countless centuries, we have the opportunity to send a message back to our lighthouses, and that message is: one... four... three. <font color="#FFFF00"> [Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by <font color="#FF0000"> The Caption Center</font> WGBH Educational Foundation]
