Outdoors Maryland; 1611

Outdoors Maryland is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you. Coming up there with the sailors celebration and shaving grapes. From the sheer bluffs of Turkey Point to the austere beauty of Sharpe's island life. And the Haunting Legacy of death Point Lookout Marilyn's like stations live on to tell the tales of are heard. Out noise Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Via an art. Inspired by Nature. You know.

Light houses are icons of the past. Of nostalgia and romance. In silhouette against the unquiet sea and sky light houses manifest stalwart grace and. We're fascinated by the lives of Lighthouse people. Tied to the rhythms of each passing night. And the unpredictability of the weather. Daily confronting the great dark unknown with pragmatism. And beauty. Armed only with a light. Marilyn's lighthouses innkeeper is among the most beloved in America. Our light houses boast many technical firsts. And history celebrates our keepers and their deeds. They include the most heroic rescue on the Chesapeake Bay and the last woman keeper in the United States. Hundred Years

ago there were nearly 40 manned light houses in Maryland's portion of the Chesapeake Bay and tributary rivers. They were built in an evolving series of styles designed to withstand the navigational challenges peculiar to the Jessop Big Bang. Today 18 light houses remain standing in the island some magnificently restored. Others in sad decline. And so we embark on a journey of discovery of some of Maryland's most fascinating standing lights working our way up the Chesapeake Bay. From the south. To the headwaters of the north. Our guide is writer and photographer Pat Boyd tech with her husband and son aboard the 34 foot sailboat. The Athena spent years researching writing and photographing Chesapeake Bay lighthouses for her book Lighting the bay.

Our first Marilyn lighthouse challenges nearly every classic lighthouse MH. But what Point Lookout lacks in presence it makes up for in mystery Point Lookout was built almost a hundred and seventy years ago in 1830 on a thin strip of peninsula jutting into the very important and treacherous confluence of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. Just inside Maryland's border with Virginia the type of structure we see here a point look at the dwelling with a lantern was generally built on rivers and it was fairly common on the Chesapeake. They did build might help. This building was originally intended to be a conical lighthouse with a separate dwelling and it was built this way mainly because the government simply ran out of funds trying to buy up this beautiful piece of land from the owner who didn't want to let it go. About 35 years after Point Lookout was constructed the civil war erupted and the union decided that this would be a good place to put a union hospital.

In addition they decided it would be an ideal place for prisoner war camp because of the peninsula and the fact that prisoners could not escape this area. By all accounts conditions were extremely harsh at the Point Lookout Confederate prison camp. Historians estimate between four and ten thousand Confederate prisoners died here. That. Terrible history has given rise to many of today's ghost stories around the place walk out some park visitors have said they think they've seen the political rhetoric or walking around and also one of the lady keepers family members have seen occasionally clean the glass for the winter. But for a man who as a boy helped tend this light through the darkest of nights those stories are simply that ghost stories. I've never seen any on your feelings all the Navy when laundering the Round Rock and cheered on a porch and that type of thing you know I

had and he began with ghost there. Harry 8 min was born at Piney Point lighthouse in the dead of winter 1920 but spent most of his boyhood at Point Lookout where his father and grandfather were lined housekeepers. He's one of a few surviving keepers in America to personally recall the days before installed electricity. On the lenses in light houses were lit with oil or kerosene lamps. The kerosene lamps had to be cleaned every day for the White House. They had to be flawless spotless and fill in a lamp so to burn all night a certain part of Niger had to exchange the lights because it wouldn't run. They're going to last all night. A kerosene would. Then eventually we did get electricity again and that was done with the window.

We didn't know what to do with them with all the luggage in it when he was great. We've had a storm bad storm. At times. Very difficult at times. Even so it was a good life and I enjoyed it and I enjoy it more now after looking back and I know how great it was and looking at the world today. Point Lookout was decommissioned in 1965 and has been replaced by a buoy out in the river. But today nobody resigns here and the Naval Air Station talks that river owns the lighthouse. Along Maryland's southeastern Bay shores few lighthouses remain standing. And so we head north to visit drum Point Lighthouse originally located off shore at the mouth of Western Bay's next major river the Patuxent.

Built in 1883 Point lighthouse was decommissioned in 1962 and moved on shore in 1975 to its present site at the culvert Marine Museum in Solomons. It stands now in splendid period restoration. Open to the public. A window on the past. One of the keepers lived on these offshore lighthouses. Here with his family in 1891. Years he was able to bring his family even though this wasn't a light house because it was so close to shore. What was so unusual about this lighthouse is that this is where he was with all the comforts of home and a place where he could entertain visitors her family including children too which died in the lighthouse. Here we also have one granddaughter that was born here. So you see that the lighthouses were very much like that like everywhere else people lived. People died people were born.

This is the fog bell a drum point light. Light house keepers always knew when the sun was going to set. But they never knew when fog was going to roll in. And one of their chief jobs was to make certain that the bell was rung during fog so that ships out at sea could hear where the station was up until the mid eighteen hundreds of these bills had to be wrung my hand which was a very tedious job. Sometimes they had to be wrong as often as every 15 seconds. But after the clockwork machine was created. This job was was made much more easier for the lighthouse keeper. This machine operates very similar to a grandfather clock with a series of weights using pulleys and fly wheels. It would strike the befogged bell as often is the station required to be struck. We continue our. Heading north and across the bay to the chopper.

And one of the most remarkable curiosities sharp saw Island lighthouse. Its history demonstrates when. Ice. And erosion. Were about midway down the Chesapeake Bay several miles south of town island this lighthouse more so than any other like Chesapeake Bay. Graphically illustrates the two biggest hazards faced by mariners as well as light houses on the Chesapeake. It's tilting at something with a 20 degree angle. It's a victim of ice flows from 1976 and the seven bad winter that year. Also it was named for an island as you can see there's no one there or back many years ago probably four or five hundred years ago that island was six or seven hundred acres even by the 1900s there was a substantial island there there were unities. It was formed the first light house was built there anything thirty eight and it became a victim of erosion. This is the big problem on the Chesapeake Bay is the

sands move the Earth moves. Rosen is pretty severe. So the first lighthouse was moved several times on the island itself by 1867 a second light house was built on the show. This second Sharp's Island lighthouse was carried away by ice in a thick fog less than 20 years later in 1881 with the keepers still on board. It would be a harrowing 16 hour ride through ice flows until they grounded off Tilghman Island. This the third Sharp's Island light was built immediately as a replacement with a tubular case on the structure designed to withstand the impact of ice. And it worked for the first 90 years at least. Sharp satellite helps us our leaning tower of the Chesapeake. It's a real landmark because of the tilt and despite the tilt it's still an allegation. There's probably no greater contrast among existing light houses than between the rustic

wreck of Sharpe's island life. And our next stop. The exquisite Thomas Point shoal lighthouse built in 1885. Thomas Point Lighthouse had been scheduled for demolition in the 1970s but public outcry prevailed and this beautiful landmark was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places and say. It is among the Bay Lights now maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard. Thomas Point Light is located at South of Annapolis and at the confluence of the west south and road rivers. And it's actually the last lighthouse of that style still in its original location. It was also the last manned lighthouse which was automated in 1986. Thomas Point Light health is the most photographed lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay and you can see why because it's a beautiful lighthouse. It's got the beautiful red orange bright colored roofs. And this is the style that has come to exemplify are typified by just a lighthouse

wooden cottage style lighthouse on stilts. It was so popular that more than 40 of them were built on the Chesapeake Bay and 20 of those were were in Maryland. Most people think that they were all hexagon shaped but probably half of them almost half of them were. Square. Before the 1850s. All Chesapeake Bay light houses were built on land. The stilts or screw piles that supported cottage style light houses like Thomas Point shoal lighthouse represented a technical revolution for building light houses on soft bottom estuaries and rivers. Invented by a blind engineer. This group was in fact a huge screw up on a rock iron pole or piling. The piling was literally screwed into the soft bottom by strong men using a lever. The pilings were then topped by the prefabricated lighthouse cottages brought out by boat. With the invention of the screw file. Light houses were built out in the bay for the first time.

Closer to dangerous shows and channels. But as light houses like Thomas point in Sharpe's island were built offshore they became lonelier and more dangerous places to live and work. We've seen the fate of the Sharpes island lights and Thomas Point shoal lighthouse was almost destroyed by ICE only two years after it was built. Nor was ice the only danger lighthouses could be rammed by vessels and before the 1930s when radio signals could reach offshore stations keepers who became ill had to flag down a boat or manage to row themselves to shore. The splendid isolation of offshore lighthouses is part and parcel of their bittersweet infusing the lives of keepers as we shall see with the stuff of legend. As we continue north and the bay begins to narrow boat traffic becomes focused on the ports

of Annapolis and especially Baltimore. By the late 19th century Baltimore was one of the most important commercial harbors in the east. Big ice proved lighthouses were required to protect commercial shipping and passenger steamers. Our next flight at Sandy Point recalls this heyday era. Long before there was a bay bridge and the waters of the Chesapeake Bay where the region's only super highway. Sandy Point Light is one of the most recognizable White Houses in Maryland. Not only can you see it as you cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge but it but it sits only about a half a mile off of Sandy Point State Park where lots of people see it it's located north of Annapolis. When you look out over a lighthouse as beautiful as Sandy Point light you can't help but feel nostalgic for an era that's that's lost. I will never have a time again we're anywhere you go on the Chesapeake Bay you see a lighthouse. Fortunately there are people who don't love the history and the

lore of the lighthouses as many of us do today. Back in 1979 vandals boarded the lighthouse and smashed the priceless for an L lens with a baseball bat. It was priceless because it was over a hundred years old it was the original plans that went with the light and that can never be replaced. But today there's there's a plastic lens and light Helles and that's a kind of history. We can't we can't bring back this incident was one of many acts of vandalism on our lighthouses and 1970s and early 1980s. And it helped to alert people to the fact that we had to save what we had left of our light Health's. As we continue up the bay off shore lights are getting bigger and more imposing. When it was late at night you know for Baltimore Lite was the largest wooden case on lighthouse in the world. And a huge tubular foundation measured

eighty six feet high and used over one million feet of lumber almost two thirds of it was sunk into the bay bottom. Off more light marks the southern approach to the crank help channel which leads into the paps of the river and the important sea port of Baltimore. In Baltimore had not been such an important seaport Baltimore life would never been built. It took a mammoth effort because the site had. Something to five feet of mud before it solid ground. So that meant that you had to drop a cylinder all the way down and into this mother and the ground before you could build a lighthouse on top of it. So when they began to build this lighthouse a took a fleet of 20 that's wholesome or the 150. To begin the project it was very dangerous. These men were called Sand hawks because they had to go down through three atmospheric levels embed this lighthouse into the ground they had to go through airlocks then neutralize the pressure as they went down. To the base of this lighthouse and if they moved too quickly the men would bleed when those

in the audience. And the ears. And people could die of doing this type of work and in fact they did at other sites. Baltimore lighthouse was one of the last manned lighthouses ever built on the Chesapeake. In the first decade of the 20th century. New lights were commissioned as automated voice and an era in Jesup Bay lighthouses came to a close. This is the all important southern approach to the Patapsco River leading to Baltimore Harbor. Not surprisingly it's near the side of Maryland's first lighthouse Bodkin Island light built in 1823. To date neither Bodkin island nor its original lighthouse exists. The next station for this approach. Seven foot no lighthouse was built in 1856 and helped guide the way to Baltimore for more than 130

years. In 1988 the city of Baltimore acquired the light and moved it by crane and barge to Pier 5. In Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Visitors can stroll the pier and view the historic light. Inside the offices of the Living Classroom Foundation which now owns and manages the like 7 foot no lighthouse is distinctive on many accounts but no light Health's with names for the seven foot hole that it sat on when it was originally built it was the first hall built in Maryland and it's quite unique and in that it's the only round cast iron light house built on the Chesapeake Bay. In addition to the unrelenting demands of tending the light in the fog bell. Light housekeepers are often called upon to rescue rector Mariners. And seven foot no lighthouse is remarkable for having launched the most heroic rescue ever made on the Chesapeake Bay performed by keeper Thomas J Stein hives. His proud descendants have led the way to preserve

seven foot no light and the memory of its most distinguished people. My name is part of that guesser and I'm one of the granddaughters. Thomas Stein nice with the last of the you keeper of the seven foot no lighthouse. My grandfather was recognized with the Congressional Medal. Of heroism. Because of a rescue that he made on August the 21st 1930. Great. That's. For. Sure. Whatever. You can imagine. The waves. At night around midnight. My grandfather heard four blasts which word was a distress signal from a tug which had sunk about a hundred yards off the White House. He said in his story the waves were crashing over and they had one paddle he was able to get six men to the engineer of the tug died from exposure. But the other five survivors were able to help him get the motor restarted it took them nearly an hour to get back into the White House because of the size of the

waves. Before that after he was one of the congressional silver lifesaving. North. The river in Baltimore where the bay narrows and veers eastward. Turkey point lies on a long remote spit of land where three big wears converged to form the uppermost reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. The conical tower lighthouse at Turkey Point was built in 1833. To guide big ships up the Elbe River and into the Chesapeake and Delaware come out. Which was then newly constructed. Keepers didn't live in these conical towers only the light. The original two Story Keeper drew a line at Turkey Point that no longer exists. Picturesque atop its 80 foot bluff Turkey Point Light is thirty five feet tall. A modest type but typical for the bird. Very close to towers which could be as high as 190 feet tall.

Tricky point is remembered most not for the drama of its design on location but for the lady of the line who tended the light for almost a quarter of a century. The last lady lighthouse keeper in the United States Fannie Mae sold her attendant the flight here at Turkey Point from the death of her husband in 1905 until her retirement in one thousand forty eight. When this lighthouse was automated it was quite unique that Fannie Mae Salter got this position as a keeper because back in one thousand twenty five women were no longer allowed to be keepers of whites in the United States because they believe that the machinery had become too heavy for them to take care of. However President Coolidge gave his permission for her to be the keeper of this light. And Fannie May prove that she was quite up to this chore because of the incredible view here at Turkey Point of Chesapeake Bay and the entrance to the Chesapeake and Delaware canal. Fannie Mae Salter played a very important role during World War Two. It was her job to

keep an eye out for. Enemy ships and U-boats also to man a radio at night and day relaying messages to other posts along the East Coast Turkey Point. It's a lonely post. But it has a spectacular view of the Chesapeake Bay. You can see how a soldier fell in love with this place it became a love of her life so much so that she even turned down a marriage proposal to remain here. Fannie Mae sold her retired in 1988 five years after electricity was finally installed at a remote Turkey Point light. By this time she had become something of a media celebrity Marilyn's famous lady keeper of the light died at the ripe old age of 83. It's fitting that we discover our last lighthouse at the headwaters of the bay on the sauce one hand a river.

The river of margins for the just at the Concord Point lighthouse here at home to Grace is the most northerly lighthouse in Maryland. This lighthouse built in 1827 was made out of local granite and the unique thing about this light Health is it was attended by one family throughout its history on the position of people was awarded to John O'Neill because he was a hero of the War of 1812 and his family continued to tend the slide until it was automated. In 1920 John Good Point lighthouse was decommissioned in 1975 and is now maintained by the Friends of Concord Point Lighthouse. They ensure that it is lit every night. And this is no ordinary light. Conquered body is one of only a handful of lights in Maryland that still blows us. I'm authentic in 1822 a Frenchman. Augusten y'all from Al invented a way to greatly magnify a light source using a series of concentric lenses. The United States lived far

behind Europe in adopting the revolutionary new technology to their light houses. But conquered Point lighthouse was among those in this country to finally receive their first for now lands in the 1850s. Later conquered point light was fitted with another larger front lines which were stolen in recent times and replaced by this authentic from now lands. A beautiful work of historic craftsmanship. It seems fitting that as our last light in Maryland Concord point is also the oldest lighthouse in Maryland to be continuously live. In the 19th century foreigners measured the intelligence and prosperity of the nation by the quality of the light houses which afforded them safe passage to New shores. Today light houses still possess an uncanny ability to store the soul. They embody the romance of the sea and the wanderlust

at the same time. Lighthouse beacons impart a primordial sense of comfort. A ray of guidance. Through the darkest night. But those gazing from shore lighthouses ride like valiant emissaries into the unknown. The returning travel weary greet lighthouses as familiar features of landscape and home. The Chronicles of light houses and their keepers enrich the chapters of American folklore rising to myth and symbol. Yet many light housekeepers would have been the last to call themselves heroes. I don't think that people felt that they were heroes anyway and I think that was a gift at all. Like an Old Yellow Moon. Looking out for the people who procure. One more way of life and I think. That with. Today we may well measure the

intelligence and prosperity of a nation by how well its history is preserved and trial. And so may the lights of Maryland shine on. And on. Drop into our website at w w w dot MP t dot a large e

to send us your comments and suggestions. Outdoors Maryland is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you.