The Rose Island Light, built in 1870, is located on Rose Island in Narragansett Bay in Newport, Rhode Island in the United States. The Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation preserves, maintains and operates the lighthouse.
One of a group of New England lighthouses built to an award-winning design by Vermont architect Albert Dow, the Rose Island Lighthouse has sister lights at Sabin Point, Pomham Rocks, and Colchester Reef.
The building was abandoned as a functioning lighthouse in 1970, when the Newport Bridge was constructed nearby. In 1984, the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation was founded to restore the dilapidated light on behalf of the City of Newport, which had received it for free from the United States government. In 1987, the federal government listed the lighthouse on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1992 it was relit as a private aid to navigation.
The lighthouse is today a travel destination, reached only by boat. For a fee to the Foundation, visitors can spend a night as a guest or a week as the "lighthouse keeper," completing many of the chores required to keep the lighthouse in good condition.
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Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”
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“The light struggled in through windows of oiled paper, but they read the word of God by it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)