Portland Head Light is a historic lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The light station sits on a head of land at the entrance of the primary shipping channel into Portland Harbor, which is within Casco Bay in the Gulf of Maine. Completed in 1791, it is the oldest lighthouse in the state of Maine. The light station is automated, and the tower, beacon, and foghorn are maintained by the United States Coast Guard, while the former lighthouse keepers' house is a maritime museum within Fort Williams Park.
Famous quotes containing the words portland, head and/or light:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Love presses my head with carefully placed feet, wretch that he is, until he has taught me to detest chaste girls, and to live with no counsel.”
—Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)
“What is love itself,
Even though it be the lightest of light love,
But dreams that hurry from beyond the world
To make low laughter more than meat and drink,
Though it but set us sighing?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)