Sailor's Savior: The Tale of the Ram Island Ledge Light in Casco Bay, Maine

Erected in 1905 along the picturesque shores of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, the Ram Island Ledge Light stands proud as a granite sentinel defending sailors from the unseen perils lurking beneath Casco Bay. Before it orbited into existence, Casco Bay had the reputation of a veritable danger zone, with countless shipwrecks. A makeshift iron spindle sailed into the scene in 1855, but the deceptive currents of Ram Island Ledge remained unconquered. The Allan Line steamship, Californian, met its watery end here in 1900, brewing a bit of a hullabaloo that convinced Congress to dolphin-kick some funds towards a lighthouse solution.

Quarried entirely from the granite halls of Vinalhaven, Maine, this lighthouse is a long-lost twin to the Graves Light off Boston. Sailing under the commands of a third-order Fresnel lens, the light has received several upgrades – electrified in 1958, automated in 1959, then illuminated by solar power in January 2001. In 1988, it inked its name in the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2010, it found a new home on the property deed of Dr. Jeffrey Florman, a surgeon hailing from Windham, Maine – historic, exorbitant, and pricey as ever.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons