Lime Rock
Light
(Ida Lewis Light)
Location: South
side of Newport Harbor
 1854 - present --Lat
41 28 38 N - Long 71 19
33 W
Established: 1854
Lighthouse Constructed:
1854
Deactivated: 1927
Original Illuminating
Apparatus: Sixth Order Fresnel Lens
Current Illuminating
Apparatus: None
Height: Lighthouse:
13 feet (1906)
 Skeleton tower: Light is 40 feet above water
Status: Yacht Club
Light Characteristic:
Lighthouse: Fixed Red (1906)
 Skeleton tower: Flashing White every 3 seconds (1940)
 Flashing White every 5 seconds (1950)
None (2005)
Range: Lighthouse:
7½ miles (1906)
 Skeleton tower: No range is given in
the 1950 Light List. A similar light with the same
candlepowe(60)
and Illuminating Apparatus
(200mm) as Ida Lewis Rock Light had a range of
7 miles.
None (2005)
In 1854, a square granite tower was built on Lime Rock in Newport
Harbor. It was equipped with a sixth order Fresnel lens. The
keeper, Hosea Lewis, had to row 200 yards to reach to the light.
During the winter storms this was difficult and at times impossible.
A small one-room building was built on Lime Rock to serve as
a temporary shelter if the keeper couldn't get to shore. In 1855,
the Lighthouse Board recommended that a permanent dwelling be
built on the rock. A keeper's dwelling was attached to the tower
the following year.
Hosea had a stroke in 1857 and was permanently disabled. His
wife Zoradia and their daughter Ida took over operation of the
light. Hosea Lewis died in 1872. His wife was appointed the keeper.
Her second daughter was very sick and required most of her time.
This left Ida to care for the light. She was the keeper in everything
but name.
In 1879, with help of Senator
Ambrose Burnside, Ida was appointed the light's keeper after
her mother resigned. It had been sugguested to Ida's mother that
if she resigned Ida would replace her. Ida served at the light
until her death in 1911.
During her years at the Lime
Rock Light, Ida saved over a dozen people from drowning. Ida
became nationally knowns in 1869, when an article about her saving
two soldiers appeared in Harper's
Weekly.
The rescue occurred on March 29, 1869, when she saved the two
soldiers after their boat was swamped during a winter storm.
She rowed out to the soldiers, clinging to their overturned boat
and pulled them into her boat. The soldiers gave Ida a gold watch
for saving them. The citizens of Newport presented her with a
boat.
In 1881 Ida was awarded a
Life-saving Medal of the First Class by the United States Life-saving
service for saving two men from drowning. The men were walking
across the frozen harbor from Newport to Fort Adams. The ice
broke and they fell into the water. Ida heard their cries for
help. She ran out of the lighthouse with a clothesline and went
across the ice to the men. She threw the clothesline to them
and pulled them out of the water. An article in the November
5, 1881 issue of Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper has a sketch of Ida recusing the men.
In 1924 the light was renamed the Ida Lewis Light in her honor.
A light on a skeleton tower replaced Ida Lewis Lighthouse when
it closed in 1927. It remained in service until 1963, when it
was deactivated. The land and building was sold in 1928. It was
later turned into the Ida Lewis Yacht Club.
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