Gay Head Lighthouse Historical Account

On the afternoon of Tuesday, the twenty-first day of October in the year 2013, William Waterway, a dedicated researcher of the Gay Head Lighthouse, unearthed the 1844 stone substructure that once supported Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts's initial timber Gay Head Lighthouse, erected in 1799. Mr. Waterway possesses a profound personal connection to the Gay Head Light and is presently authoring a book detailing the lighthouse's narrative, slated for release by History Press in the early portion of 2014.

"This finding is of paramount significance to the historical chronicle of the Gay Head Lighthouse, as well as the current endeavors to safeguard the existing beacon," stated Mr. Waterway. "This stone foundation, dating back to 1844, was erected to accommodate the original 1799 wooden Gay Head Lighthouse when it was relocated seventy-five feet from the receding cliff edges. Through this discovery, we are now empowered to quantify the rate at which the Gay Head Cliffs have been eroding from 1799 up to the present day. This represents a historical first, providing us with such concrete evidence as a definitive historical marker."

The present-day brick Gay Head Lighthouse took the place of the original 1799 wooden structure in the year 1856. Currently, the Gay Head Lighthouse faces considerable peril from erosion, having recently been designated on the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List of Endangered Lighthouses, in addition to being recognized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of America's eleven most imperiled historic sites.

Mr. Waterway is quite familiar with the Gay Head Lighthouse. As previously chronicled in Lighthouse Digest, during the 1980s, his non-profit entity, the Vineyard Environmental Research Institute (VERI), was the inaugural civilian organization in the history of the United States to assume stewardship of "operational" lighthouses from the United States Coast Guard. In the 1980s, the U.S. Coast Guard had plans to dismantle the Gay Head Lighthouse and substitute it with a skeletal steel tower crowned by a flashing beacon. Mr. Waterway's dedicated efforts to preserve the lighthouse garnered the endorsement of Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Gerry Studds. Following the presentation of testimony before Congress, Mr. Waterway's organization, VERI, was granted custodianship of three endangered lighthouses on Martha's Vineyard through a distinctive thirty-five-year licensing agreement with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Presently, a comprehensive, island-wide initiative is in progress on Martha's Vineyard to amass three million dollars for the relocation of the imperiled Gay Head Lighthouse to a secure site.

For supplementary details or if you possess historical images of the Gay Head Lighthouse that you might wish to contribute, kindly reach out to William Waterway at 508-627-4929, via email at williamwaterway@aol.com, by postal mail to 5 Pleasant Ave., Edgartown, MA 02539, or visit http://www.williamwaterway.com.