Notes:
(1) Conanicut Island Light marked the hazardous shoals around Conanicut Point.
     The Lighthouse was a 6-room house with a square tower attached to the Northeast corner.

      In the early 1870s, agricultural Conanicut Island became a popular place for summer recreation and day trips as steam powered ferryboat service from Newport to Jamestown became more reliable. By 1872, the resort boom on Conanicut Island had begun.

      In May 1870, the Wickford Railroad & Steamboat Company began passenger steamboat service between Wickford and Newport.  The company provided New York businessmen and vacationers an alternative service to and from resort areas with a shortcut route versus the Long Island steamer travel.  Passengers traveled by train from New York to Wickford where they boarded Wagner and Pullman passenger coaches from the Wickford Junction Rail Station to the steamship dock at the Wickford Landing on the end of Poplar Point.  From here, they boarded a steamer for a 75-minute ride to Newport.

      In 1884, Congress appropriated $18,000 to build a Lighthouse at Conanicut (or North) Point to aid the palatial passenger steamboat navigation from Wickford and Providence to Newport away from the hazardous shoals around Conanicut Point and to mark the new steamboat landing dock for the planned and partially built Conanicut Park, a summer home and hotel complex.

      In 1886, construction of a 2-story Gothic Revival six room Keeper’s House with Gingerbread trim and attached White Square Wood framed Lighthouse was completed.  The new Light was First Lit on April 1, 1886 exhibiting a fixed white light illuminated by a Fifth-order Fresnel lens 47 feet above sea level.


      Light-keeper Horace Arnold was appointed the first Keeper on March 23, 1886 one year after barely escaping a ice floe that destroyed the Keeper’s house at Conimicut Shoal Light.

      In 1891, a Fog Bell struck by machine was installed and later replaced by a compressed-air siren in 1903.  The Light’s Characteristic was changed to Fixed Red in 1907.

      In 1932, reports indicated the decreased volume of navigation no longer justified the cost of an attended Lighthouse and Conanicut Island Light was replaced by an automatic light on a steel skeleton tower in 1933 (see Note 5).  The Lantern Room was removed, the Lighthouse capped, and the property was purchased privately for $2,785 at auction on Aug 27, 1934.

(2) Optics Refitted:
     1907: Fifth-order Fresnel Lens, Fixed Red

(3) The present Tower is Red with a White Trim and capped without the Lantern Room

(4) Fog Signals:
     1903: Compresed Air Siren, 3s Blast every 17 seconds

(5) By 1932, statistics established that volume of navigation no longer justified the cost of an attended Lighthouse. In 1933, Conanicut Island Light was one of the first Lighthouses to be replaced by an automatic light on a skeleton tower.


A Lighted Bell Buoy, Flashing Red every 4-seconds visible range of 4 nautical miles, replaced the skeleton Light tower.

(6) For Directions, enter the address, 64 Bay View Drive North, Jamestown, RI 02835-2100 at MapQuest.
     Author’s note: This area is best viewed by boat for scenery only since the house barely resembles a Lighthouse.