Pemaquid Point Light at sunrise, just before its lantern is extinguished for the day.  Though only about six miles from the town of Boothbay Harbor as the gull flies, the lighthouse takes upwards of an hour to reach by car, via a long drive up Boothbay Peninsula and back down Pemaquid Peninsula.

Pemaquid Point Light at sunrise.  Originally built in 1827, the lighthouse tower of stone began to fall apart and had to be reconstructed in 1835.  The lighthouse keeper’s dwelling deteriorated as well and was reconstructed in 1857.

Pemaquid Point.

Pemaquid Point.

Pemaquid Point Light reflected in a tidal pool.

Pemaquid Point.

Pemaquid Point Light.  The home for the lighthouse keeper, on the right, was rented out to artists after the lighthouse was automated in 1934, and now serves as a Fisherman’s Museum.

A gull among the rocks and tidal pools at Pemaquid Point.

Pemaquid Point Light.

The “frozen wave,” an unusual rock formation resembling a cresting ocean wave, below the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point.

Pemaquid Point.

A couple of miles from the lighthouse is Fort William Henry, overlooking Pemaquid Harbor, which it was built to defend.  Originally constructed in 1692, the only structure standing here today is a hundred-year-old replica of the round bastion.  The low rows of stone mark where the fortress walls, once as high as 22 feet, once stood.

Detail of the doorway to the reconstructed bastion at Fort William Henry.  Built by the English colonists of Massachusetts, the fort - perhaps the first made of stone in New England - was sited on the northern edge of English territory to prevent southern expansion by the French.  It was destroyed in an attack by natives and French just four years after its construction.