History
The history of Bass Harbor Head Light started in 1855 when it was deemed that there was sufficient reason for a lighthouse at the mouth of Bass Harbor. $5000 was appropriated by Congress for its construction in 1858. The construction of a fog bell and tower, which no longer remains today, was completed in 1876 with a much larger 4000 pound (1800 kg) bell being placed inside the tower in 1898. The keeper's house remains in its original configuration with the exception of a 10-foot addition that was added in 1900. The lighthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Bass Harbor Head Light Station on January 21, 1988, reference number 87002273.
In 1902, an oil storage house constructed of brick was built 205 feet northwest of the lighthouse.
Bass Harbor's fifth order Fresnel lens was replaced in 1902 with a larger fourth order. This lens was manufactured by the French company Henry-Lepaute. This lens remains in service today.
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“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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