Local News

This Maine lighthouse, 10 miles out to sea, is getting a makeover

This undated photo released by the federal General Services Administration shows the Halfway Rock Light Station on a small island in Casco Bay off Harpswell, Maine. The administration is the nearing the end of an online auction for the 76-foot-high lighthouse, with a half dozen bidders and a high bid of more than $200,000. (AP Photo/General Services Administration, Jeremy D'Entremont) AP

By Amanda Hoover

July 10, 2016

Casco Bay’s most remote lighthouse is getting a makeover, according to the Portland Press Herald.

Halfway Rock, a lighthouse perched on a two-acre ledge 10 miles from the mainland, was used by the Coast Guard and abandoned more than 40 years ago. In 2014, Ford Reiche bought the property for $283,000 — the most ever paid for a lighthouse in Maine — and he’s spent the past year replacing damaged windows and walls in attempt to counteract decades of weathering, the Press Herald reported.

Reiche, who is active in historic preservation, plans to preserve the landmark, which was once listed as one of the 10 most endangered historic properties in Maine. He told the Press Herald that the restoration was something that needed to be done, and he saw himself as someone with the means to do it.

“Ford was its last hope, really,” Bob Trapani, the executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation, told the Press Herald. “No one would do what he’s doing. Thirty years from now, this will be seen as a historic moment.”

Read the full Press Herald story here.