[TNham] CNN.com - Lighthouses - Free to a good home

[Greg Williams]

Want to help preserve lighthouses for amateur radio special event
stations???  Look at this offer!!!

Lighthouses: Free to a good home
June 7, 2002 Posted: 10:47 PM EDT (0247 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Want a lighthouse? The Interior Department has such a
deal for you.

It's trying to get rid of 301 of them, all considered government surplus.

The Coast Guard doesn't want them anymore, so it's willing to give them away
to anybody who'll offer them a good home. There are a couple of catches:
government and nonprofit groups have first dibs; and lighthouses are
expensive to keep up.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton is announcing next week the first six being
turned over to public and private interests under the National Historic
Lighthouse Preservation Program.

Congress and former President Clinton created the program in 2000 at the
urging of Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rep. Mark Souder, R-Indiana. A
visit in January to Point Pinos Light in Monterey, California -- the oldest
active lighthouse on the West Coast, where a light has been shining since
1855 -- sparked Norton's interest. She asked the National Park Service to
take a closer look at what her agency could do.

Since then, the department has become the light middleman, its Maritime
Heritage Program handling details for the Coast Guard.

Next week, Norton travels to Georgia's Tybee Island Light, then to Lake
Michigan's Point Betsie Lighthouse; Michigan has 46 lighthouses, more than
any other state. She'll recommend that the General Services Administration,
acting as temporary custodian for the lighthouses, turn over the first six
to new owners including a city, a museum, a historical society and the Park
Service.

"There is a mystique to lighthouses, a drama, a history, almost an aura of
reverence for their lifesaving function," Norton said in remarks prepared
for delivery at the ceremony Monday in Georgia.

"It is not surprising that historians, lighthouse buffs and just plain
citizens have been part of an effort to rescue lighthouses from either
disrepair or neglect."

The lighthouses being given away next week are Rondout Creek Light in
Kingston, New York; Esopus Meadows Light, also known as the Middle Hudson
River Light, near Esopus, New York; St. Augustine Light, in St. Augustine,
Florida; Tybee Island Light, near Savannah, Georgia; Little River Light,
near Cutler, Maine; and Munising Range Lights, near Frankfort, Michigan.

"One of the outstanding features of this law is that it puts nonprofits on
an equal footing with government in becoming partners in the preservation of
lighthouses," Norton said.

Culleen Chambers, director of the Tybee Island Historical Society, said she
was proud and humbled that her group will help "set the stage for all future
transfers in the nation."

When the lighthouse giveaway is complete, only one lighthouse in the country
will be required by federal law to have a lightkeeper: the Boston Harbor
Light, the nation's first one, established in 1716 on Little Brewster
Island. It was blown up by the British in 1776, rebuilt, and has had a light
burning again since 1783.

The law authorizes the no-cost transfer of historic lighthouses and stations
from the Coast Guard to federal, local and nonprofit groups. If insufficient
interest is found among those groups, individuals can stake a claim.

"It will be the exception, not the rule," said Dan Smith, special assistant
to the National Park Service director, coordinator of the pilot program.
"There's a huge outcry in this country from people who want to participate
in preserving lighthouses."

The Coast Guard has automated the nation's lights and lacks the money to
maintain the lighthouses but hopes to put them in the hands of groups that
can.

But anyone taking on a lighthouse can expect to spend millions of dollars,
Smith said. It must be maintained according to strict federal standards, and
the transfer deed includes a clause that says the lighthouse reverts to
federal ownership if it is not kept up.

Along the seacoasts and the Great Lakes, more than 200 lighthouses are open
to tours. People can sleep in about 15 of them in California, Maine,
Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington state.

The numbers of Coast Guard lighthouses to be transferred to someone else to
maintain:

Alaska 11
California 18
Connecticut 11
Caribbean 1
Delaware 8
Florida 16
Georgia 2
Hawaii 6
Illinois 1
Louisiana 6
Massachusetts 30
Maryland 13
Maine 19
Michigan 46
Minnesota 2
North Carolina 5
New Hampshire 1
New Jersey 3
New York 22
Ohio 5
Oregon 4
Puerto Rico 13
Rhode Island 10
South Carolina 3
Texas 3
Virginia 8
Washington 17
Wisconsin 17

Total 301