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Maine Lighthouse Museum - Offering the most extensive lighthouse artifact collection in the country

The Maine Lighthouse Museum is located right in Rockland, Maine. Do you have an interest in lighthouses or American maritime history? If so, you can indulge in the largest collection of lighthouse lenses and artifacts as well as the most extensive and prized collection of Coast Guard memorabilia in the entire country..

Locals and people throughout the country recognize the Maine Lighthouse Museum for its fantastic lenses and heartwarming stories of the old lighthouse keepers and their families. It is in the same building as the Maine Discovery Center, Light Depot Annex Gift Shop, as well as the Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce. People can also enjoy the surrounding restaurants, art galleries, and boutiques.

Maine Lighthouse Museum - Preserving the memorabilia and stories of America's lighthouse era

The museum history traces back to 1972, in which retired Coast Guard Officer, Kenneth Black, founded the Shore Village Museum, which was the precursor to the Maine Lighthouse Museum. His goal was to preserve the nation’s heritage and to promote the study and appreciation of maritime history for future generations. The Shore Village Museum closed in 2004 simply due to size constraints in relation to the continuously growing number of collections and exhibits, and transferred contents (collection of Civil War memorabilia, maritime materials, and lighthouse exhibits) to the Maine Lighthouse Museum. By 2005, this new museum already presented more rare lighthouse lenses than any other museum in the country. In the spring of 2007, the American Lighthouse Foundation decided to merge the collection of the Maine Lighthouse Museum with the Museum of Lighthouse History in Wells, Maine, creating the largest lighthouse museum in the United States.

As a nonprofit educational organization, the Maine Lighthouse Museum’s mission is to educate and promote the American lighthouse and lifesaving history and tradition, and its continuing progress through the years to the general public. The museum has the largest collection of Fresnel lenses, a type of lens invented by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel back in the 1820s, specifically for lighthouse usage. Compared to other lenses during this time, the Fresnel lens were much thinner and lighter in design, allowing increased levels of light to pass through them. This made the lighthouses more visible at longer distances, serving as critical guides to mariners.

This museum displays as many stories as it does artifacts. Here, people can learn about the different stories of the men and women in the United States Coast Guard and United States Life-Saving Services that exhibited the utmost in bravery and dedication. There are vintage photographs of famous lighthouse keepers such as Abbie Burgess Grant, Robert Sterling, Ida Lewis, Fanny Mae Salter, and others. Complete and detailed lighthouse models are on display to illustrate the different types of lighthouses. Numerous buoys, foghorns, and fog bells are also showcased, along with other pieces of memorabilia that cannot be found anywhere else.

Maine Lighthouse Museum is located at One Park Drive in Rockland, Maine. For more information, please call 207-594-3301 or visit www.mainelighthousemuseum.com.