Maine

Nubble Light | Maine’s Favorite Lighthouse

Cape Neddick Light perches so handsomely on Nubble Island that we call it simply “Nubble Light.” It may well be the light we love most.

By Mel Allen

Aug 15 2022

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Cape Neddick Light on Nubble Island in Maine.

Photo Credit : Dreamstime
Barely 200 feet from the shallows of long sands beach, Cape Neddick Light perches so handsomely on its bony 2.8-acre nest of Nubble Island that we call it simply “Nubble Light.” Maine boasts more than 60 standing lighthouses. Nubble Light, Maine’s southernmost light, may well be the one we love most. In 1977, when the Voyager spacecraft blasted off for Jupiter and beyond in search of possible alien life, their capsules carried photos to show what we revered here on earth. Among those photos: the Great Wall of China, the Grand Canyon, Nubble Light. The light-house and the keeper’s house are on the National Register of Historic Places and are engraved on York’s town seal, as if to say: Nubble belongs to the country, but here is its home. The keepers of the light who lived here from 1879 until the last Coast Guardsman left in the summer of 1987 felt that this was their calling. They tended the French-crafted Fresnel lens as if it were a child, polishing its light until it shone like gold. Sometimes winter blew fog that blanketed the knoll for weeks at a time. The keepers knew that the safety of ships depended on their keeping Nubble’s red light glowing 15 miles out to sea. At dawn, they’d extinguish the light, watch the sun creep over the water, and start their chores. Nubble Light is at its finest on a blue-sky day when the ocean scent makes mere breathing worth the trip. Stop at tiny Sohier Park on Nubble Road. Ahead you’ll see the gleaming white tower reaching 41 feet high, and beside it the trim red-roofed keeper’s house, a few outlying sheds, and a white picket fence, as if the lighthouse stood on a shady neighborhood street. Lighthouses have become icons of our yearning, speaking to us of lives spare and romantic at the same time. We wish we lived there; we know we cannot. So we carry the light inside, no matter where we live. Is the Nubble Light your favorite New England lighthouse? This post originally appeared in the September/October 2015 issue of Yankee Magazine.

SEE MORE: Best 5 New England LighthousesCape Cod, Nantucket & Martha’s Vineyard LighthousesNew England Lighthouses in Winter

Mel Allen

Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.

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