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Two hundred years ago, builders situated the Montauk Lighthouse over 300 feet from the bluffs of the Atlantic Ocean, predicting it would withstand 200 years of erosion.
Unfortunately, their predictions were accurate.
Fortunately, an unlikely savior beat the wind and spray of the Atlantic to ensure the lighthouse could celebrate its bicentennial this year.
With the first session of the new United States Congress in 1789, the newly created lighthouse service sought to build new lighthouses in locations that would promote the fledgling nation's economy and trade. A lighthouse at Montauk Point was quickly seen as critical to the regional economy. Instead of serving just one port or harbor, it would lead mariners in-between southern New England ports and serve as the first land-based light for ships traveling from Europe to New York.
On April 12, 1792, Congress and President George Washington authorized the construction of a lighthouse at Montauk Point. Eleven months later, Congress appropriated $20,000 for the construction of the lighthouse on a tract of land known as Turtle Hill. Even at that early stage, the problems of erosion at the bluffs were anticipated.
"As the Bank is washed by the sea in storms," noted Ezra L'Hommedieu of the New York Chamber of Commerce in recommending the site 297 feet westward from the bluffs, "we suppose it best to set the buildings at this distance."
Just as with governmental projects today, the building of the lighthouse was put to bid and awarded to the low bidder, John McComb Jr. of New York at $22,300. However, McComb was probably the most qualified lighthouse builder in the new nation. He had already built the nation's second lighthouse, the Cape Henry, Virginia lighthouse in 1792. In fact, the Montauk Lighthouse is 8 feet taller and 2 feet wider than its nearly identical cousin in Cape Henry.
The erosion dilemma was also noted by McComb when he began work on the lighthouse in 1796. He proposed moving the tower site 50 further back from the bluffs, noting that the bank "wastes away very fast."
McComb's lighthouse building did not stop with the Montauk Lighthouse. In 1798, McComb was selected to build the Eaton's Neck lighthouse on Long Island's North Shore. However, in the early nineteenth century, his construction skills moved away from lighthouses and into other municipal buildings. He designed and built Alexander Hamilton's "The Grange" in 1801, New York City Hall in 1804, and Castle Clinton at Battery Park in 1807. With all this extra work, McComb did not pursue other lighthouse projects.
In retrospect, McComb must be considered one of the foremost builders of masonry lighthouses. Of the first eight masonry lighthouses built by the federal government between 1789 and 1800, four still stand-the 1791 Portland Head, Maine Lighthouse, the 1792 Cape Henry Lighthouse, the 1796 Montauk Lighthouse, and the 1798 Eaton's Neck Lighthouse-and McComb built three of them.
Though the decades, Mother Nature took her toll on Turtle Hill at Montauk, slowly cutting the bluff down, foot by foot. By the mid-twentieth century, the Montauk Lighthouse's days seemed numbered. After World War II, the US Army Corps of Engineers made the first attempt to halt the erosion of the bluffs by wave action by installing a 700 foot long sea wall at the base of the cliffs. The first effort lasted a short time, as a series of severe storms in the 1950s not only overwashed the sea wall, but also advanced the erosion of the bluffs even more.
With the budget crunches of the late 1960s and a reduced reliance on lighthouses as navigational aides, the fate of the Montauk Lighthouse was in jeopardy. In 1967, the Coast Guard began to consider alternatives to maintaining the lighthouse. A steel light tower was considered as a cheaper alternative.
"We don't consider that this would be a wise expenditure of taxpayer's money," noted the public relations offices for the Coast Guard on Governors' Island at the time. "It would seen more in the realm of some preservation society or historical organization to provide funds to save the lighthouse."
A grass roots effort to save the lighthouse began in 1967 by Dan Rattiner, editor of the Montauk Pioneer and Dan's Papers, with a front page edition featuring a photo of the Shinnecock Lighthouse falling to the ground (as published in Lighthouse Digest, June 1996). Soon after, a vigil known as the first "Montauk Point Lighthouse Light-In" attracted 1500 people, starting the true grass roots effort to save the lighthouse.
That publicity attracted New York City textile designer Giorgina Reid. In the early 1960s, Giorgina and her husband, Donald, purchased a small cottage on Long Island's North Shore. She had always loved the ocean and dreamed of having a place on the water. The dream cottage sat 50 feet from the edge of a 100 foot high bluff.
A nor'easter in the Spring of 1962, which raged for three days and inflicted the most coastal damage and erosion on Long Island since the infamous Hurricane of 1938, gave the couple first hand experience of living on the coast. After weathering the storm at their apartment in the city, they made their way to their cottage-fearing the worst.
While their cottage was intact, a third of their property had washed down the Sound below. The threat to her dream cottage meant so much that aroused a fighting spirit in Giorgina. She focused upon pieces of washed up lumber and reeds from the storm as a way to save her land from the sea.
With an abundant and free supply of washed up debris, Giorgina began to use the washed up junk to fill in the gullies and valleys created by the storm. With the reeds stuffed behind the lumber and topped off with sand and local vegetation, she created her own form of terracing. Support stakes at each level would hold the lumber rafters in place while the sand created a place to plant local vegetation. The reeds at the bottom served to prevent the sand from washing out and hold water for the plants above.
The terracing system forced heavy rains - which would normally carry parts of the bluff on its trip down the 100 foot embankment - to flow over and down each and every terrace. This stopped the momentum and erosion power gravity had on the water. To her and her neighbors' amazement, the terracing system began to stabilize her bluff. With her guidance, many of her neighbors followed with their own terracing systems as well.
With the success of this local experiment, Giorgina devoted great time and effort to the project. By day, it was walking up and down a 100 foot embankment building terraces. By night, she concentrated on producing a legitimate US Patent for Reed-Trench Terracing and a layman's guide to shore protection called "How to Hold Up a Bank."
The publicity over the erosion threat to the lighthouse and her successes at her cottage, enabled Giorgina to petition the Coast Guard for permission to conduct a reed-trench terracing experiment at the Montauk Lighthouse. Admittedly, Coast Guard engineers had a good chuckle over her proposal. They wondered, knowing what they knew about coastal engineering of the North Atlantic, how a woman of retirement age with no engineering background and an obvious lack of funding was going to succeed. Although reluctant at first, a growing public consensus to save the lighthouse and with nothing to lose, the government granted a pilot project to be managed by Giorgina and funded by local donations.
Work began on Earth Day, April 22, 1970 and by the end of the summer, the steep eroding bluff under the lighthouse became a system of stepped terraces. When inspected by Coast Guard engineers, they were so impressed that they unanimously supported a continuation of the project and added Coast Guard funds.
The major problem left facing the project was that terraces alone would not stand up to the North Atlantic. This proved true in February 1972 when a winter storm washed out the terraces at sea level. The Coast Guard came to the rescue and installed a series of boulders to protect the toe of the bluff. That foundation helped the project continue.
Giorgina worked for the next 15 years to complete the entire project, proving that coastal erosion could be contained at Montauk Point Lighthouse. Photos from the late 1960s and the early 1990s show no loss of the bluff on the eastern edge of the lighthouse.
After her retirement from the erosion project, the status of the Montauk Lighthouse took a new direction. With imposing budget restriction, the Coast Guard accepted a bid by the Montauk Historical Society to take over and preserve the lighthouse as a National Landmark, to create a maritime museum, and to maintain the erosion control project.
The historical society relied on private donations and its "Back to the Ranch Concerts" - a series of annual concerts originally started by singer Paul Simon - to upgrade the facilities and continue the erosion project. In the 1990s, federal and state funding became available to reinforce the toe protection and expand the erosion project to include surrounding state parklands.
This fall, the Montauk Lighthouse celebrates its bicentennial - providing guidance and safety for mariners throughout Southern New England for over 200 years. And if it weren't for a New York City textile engineer who learned how to hold up a bank, it may not have made it.
The Montauk Point Lighthouse Museum is located at the eastern tip of Long Island, New York, at the Montauk Point State Park. The museum is open daily from 10:30am to 4:30pm and charges $3.00 for admission. The museum in the old keepers house features 7 rooms of information and artifacts from the Montauk Lighthouse, the erosion project headed by Giorgina Reid, all 28 of the Long Island and regional lighthouses, the evolution of the Fresnel lens, and the lighthouse tower itself. Visitors may climb to the watchdeck level of the tower, (just below the light) 86 feet up. Parking is available in adjacent Montauk Point State Park for $4 from 8am to 4pm. For more information and group tours call 516-668-2544.
This story appeared in the
December 1996 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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