Boston Harbor Light, MA - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

In the days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the city of Boston became the main commercial center for all the American colonies due to its large and deep harbor. But getting ships into that harbor was tricky business especially at night. After several shipwrecks causing loss of life and cargo, commercial interests in the city implored the General Court to build a lighthouse at the entrance to the outer harbor. The requested tower was completed in 1716 at a cost of £2,385 and first lit on September 14 of that year making it the first lighthouse in North America. At that time, there were only about 70 lighthouses in the entire world. (Around here, you know something’s old if its cost is expressed in British pounds!)

During the American Revolution, while the British occupied Boston, the lighthouse was viewed as contrary to the patriot cause and several attempts were made to destroy it. When the British were finally driven from Boston in 1776, they set off an explosive charge that reduced what was left of the lighthouse to rubble.

A new lighthouse was completed in 1783 on the same spot and has been in service ever since. This is the lighthouse depicted on the stamp. And those rings around the tower are not decorations – they’re metal bands that were placed in 1806 to hold the tower together after several large cracks were discovered in the structure.

In the present era of satellites and GPS navigation systems, lighthouses like this one have become largely obsolete. But this lighthouse has been kept in operation with a real live lighthouse keeper who lives on the island. This is done more for historic preservation purposes than necessity in order to maintain the light station as a kind of living museum. Little Brewster Island currently belongs to the National Park Service who conduct tours of the light station during the summer months. If you take the tour, not only can you see the scene on the stamp but you can also climb the tower and get up close and personal with a 150+ year old second order Fresnel lens.

The stamp was one of a set of five showing different New England Lighthouses.

Stamp Issuing Country: United States Date of Issue: 13-July-2013 Denomination: (46 cents) Color: multicolored Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: Not listed

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