Conimicut
Light
 |
© 2004 R. Holmes |
Location: Entrance
to Providence River
 1868 - present Lat 41 43
01.400 N - Long 71 20 41.700 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 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 his son moved back to the Nayatt Point keeper's dwelling.
Several years later Arnold's son was killed, when he fell from the lighthouse.
Living at a lighthouse was a lonely and isolated life for keepers and their families
at offshore stations like Conimicut Lighthouse. In 1922, Keeper Ellsworth Smith and his wife Nellie and their two sons, a two year old and a five year old, were living at the lighthouse. The isolation was too much for her. She becamed depressed. She begged her husband to let her leave the the lighthouse. She even threatened to kill herself, if he didn't let leave. He refused.
On June ninth, Ellsworth went to Providence on business. Nellie found his keys and opened the medicine cabinet and took out some poison tablets. She gave each child a tablets, telling them it was candy. The two brothers tooks them. The younger brother swallowed it but older brother didn't like the taste of it and spit the tablet out. The posion still affected him and make him very sick. Nellie lay down on her bed and took one of the posion tablets. She died almost instantly.
Ellsworth returned to lighthouse at six o'clock and found his wife and two year old son dead. He rushed his five year old son ashore to get aid. After his son was given an antidote he was taken to Ellsworth's sister's house to recover. The lighthouse remained unlighthed that night.
The granite tower was replaced with an iron tower in 1883. In 1960, Conimicut
Point Lightouse was converted to electricity. It was one the first lighthouses in America to be converted. It was automated
in 1966.
In 2004 the city of
Warwick, Rhode Island acquired Conimicut Lighthouse 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 the lighthouse
structure. The U.S. Coast Guard will only maintain the lighthouse's beacon and
fog signal.
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