Off the Beaten Track: Burlington Breakwater Lights Burlington, VT

In the 1800s, Lake Champlain became a major shipping route after the establishment of canals connecting it to the Hudson River, the Great Lakes, and north to the St. Lawrence River. Burlington grew into the third-largest lumber port in the nation.

Burlington's harbor was ideally situated, but it was exposed to strong winds. In an effort to protect the harbor, a granite breakwater was constructed beginning in the 1830s. By 1896, the breakwater reached 4,200 feet in length.

Wooden lighthouses were first placed on the ends of the breakwater in 1857 to mark the entrances to the harbor, and as the breakwater grew, the lights were relocated. A third light was placed at the center of the breakwater in 1890. The wooden towers were exposed to wind, ice, and even fire – the northern tower burned in 1870, and in 1876 the southern light was knocked over in a storm.

The wooden towers were eventually replaced with steel light towers: the north and middle lights in 1925, and the south light in 1950. Though less susceptible to damage from the elements, the modern towers lacked the charm of the breakwater’s wooden end-pieces.

The lights were manned until 1938. On the evening when the lights were manually lit for the last time, Keeper Rolla W. Hill was ceremoniously accompanied back to shore by a small flotilla of twelve boats carrying seventy-five people.

“Given the historic significance of the breakwater,” says Burlington’s Mayor Peter Clavelle, “we came up with the idea of recreating the original lighthouse structures, and approached Senator Patrick Leahy’s office about the possibility of creating the replicas.” Leahy was able to obtain $250,000 for this project through a transportation bill in 2001.

The lighthouses were built on the Burlington waterfront by Atlantic Mechanical, Inc. of Wiscasset, Maine, so the public could view the construction process. Nearby, a kiosk, staffed with a historical interpreter, provided information about the Burlington breakwater and the lighthouse project.

It is obvious to even the casual observer that the northern and southern breakwater lighthouses are different. The original lighthouse plans could not be located according to Art Cohn, director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. “What we did,” he says, “was use photographic evidence to create a set of plans that from the outside seem historically correct, and of course we chose two different time periods to represent - the smaller, southern light tower, which is circa 1857, and the larger, northern light tower which is circa 1890. We worked with the photographs and other historical images to ensure that people seeing the towers today would be actually viewing the same façade that they would have seen during those time periods.”

The lighthouses are located at both ends of the breakwater along Burlington Harbor. Both are best viewed from one of the many tour boats out in the harbor.

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