Conimicut
Light
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© 2004 R. Holmes
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Location: Entrance
to Providence River
 1868 - present Lat 41
43 01 N - Long 71 20 42 W
Established: 1868
Original Lighthouse
Constructed: 1868
Current Lighthouse
Constructed: 1883
Automated: 1966
Original Illuminating
Apparatus: Fourth Order Fresnel Lens
Current Illuminating
Apparatus: 250-mm lens
Height: 58 feet
Status: Active aid to Navigation
Light Characteristic: Fixed White - Red sector from 322° to 349° (1906)
Flashing White every 2.5 seconds - Red sector from 322°
to 349° (2005)
Range: 15 miles (1906)
 White 8 miles -
Red 5 miles (2005)
In 1866, a granite daybeacon
was
built on the shoal off Conimicut Point at the entrance to the
Providence River. During its construction, the Lighthouse Board
received a petition, signed by a number of ship owners and captains,
asking that a light be added to the tower and the nearby Nayatt
Point Lighthouse be discontinued.
A fourth order Fresnel lens
placed on the tower was first lighted on November 1, 1868. Nayatt
Point Lighthouse was discontinued that day. The new lighthouse
did not have a keeper's quarters. The keepers had lived at the
former Naytt Point light and rowed nearly a mile to the Conimicut
Point Lighthouse.
A five-room stone keeper's
dwelling was built on the lighthouse's landing pier in 1874.
It did not last long. The following March, a field of floating
ice moving down the Providence River hit the pier. The keeper's
dwelling started to break up. The keeper, Horace Arnold, and
his son had to jump onto a passing ice floe to avoid drowning.
They were on the ice floe for several hours, until they were
rescued by a passing tug. The keeper's dwelling was destroyed.
They lost all of their furniture. Horace and son moved back to
the Nayatt Point keeper's dwelling. Several years later Arnold's
son was killed, when he fell from the lighthouse.
The granite tower was replaced with an iron tower in 1883. In
1960, Conimicut Point was the last lighthouse in America converted
to electricity. It was automated in 1966.
In 2004 the city of Warwick,
Rhode Island acquired Conimicut Light under the National Historic
Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000(NHLPA). The NHLPA allows
the transfer of historic light stations to federal agency tribes,
state and local governments, nonprofit corporations, educational
agencies and community development groups.
Conimicut Light was transferred
to Warwick on September 29, 2004 in a ceremony held at the Elizabeth
Buffum Chance Center. Two of the lights's former keepers, Fred
Mikkelsen and Robert Onosko, were at the ceremony.
The city of Warwick in now
responsible for the care and maintenance of lighthouse structure.
The U.S. Coast Guard will only maintain the lighthouse's beacon
and fog signal.
In October 2004, I saw grass
growing on the lighthouse. I hope this isn't a sign of how the
lighthouse will be cared for in the future.
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