Easternmost Point: Quoddy Head State Park

West Quoddy Head Light - Easternmost Point
West Quoddy Head Light in the Fog
We visited Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec, Maine after our night of camping on Campobello Island. Quoddy Head State Park is the easternmost point in the United States. There is an iconic lighthouse there, as well as a bog and hiking trails. I heard that the birdwatching there is spectacular. That far North and East, there had to be some interesting birds, so I added Quoddy Head to our lighthouse itinerary.

I wanted to visit the easternmost point, because I had already been to the southern most point in the continental US. However, subsequent research indicated that the Northern, Eastern and Westernmost points of the US are all in Alaska. I’m just keeping it Lower 48 so I can feel good about things. Maybe when I get to Alaska, I can make these places a priority. I think the birdwatching will be pretty good there too.

Cold Rain and Fog

We could hear the foghorn when we woke up on Campobello Island. Sometimes the fog burns off, but our morning was a mix of rain and fog and then a some more rain. After we took the bridge back over into the United States, we were happy to find a breakfast place packed with locals playing some serious cribbage. I wanted to watch the cribbage and try to remember how it is played, but we sat in the back room overlooking the river. When we ordered, I could see across the river to Canada. After we had finished our pancakes, we couldn’t see anything out the windows. The rain picked up as we ran from the restaurant to the car, and got harder on the drive out to the state park. When we pulled into the parking lot, I could just make out the lighthouse down at the end of the drive. We walked quickly down to the lighthouse in the rain.

West Quoddy Head Light

The West Quoddy Head Light looks how a lighthouse should look. It is painted with horizontal red and white stripes, and is still an active navigational aid. I looked up at the light for a while. It doesn’t revolve like I imagine a lighthouse beam should do. It flashes. Two seconds on, two seconds off, two seconds on, nine seconds off. We could see the lens from our vantage point. It is a third order Fresnel, and I tried to remember how big the lenses on display were from our trip to the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point.

West Quoddy Head Light - Easternmost Point
West Quoddy Head Light

There is a granite monument marking the Easternmost point. Standing here, the rain let up a little, and we could see the coastline. The rocky outcropping was covered with seaweed and crashing surf. Not a bird in sight, but probably a pretty important location for a lighthouse.

A Mini Fresnel Lens
A Mini Fresnel Lens
We were about to leave, when I noticed that the Visitor Center now had a big OPEN flag out. We went inside and toured the small and quirky displays. There was a great two minute video climbing the steps up to the tower of the lighthouse. I love the models that local woodcarvers make of historic buildings, and the one on display here was great.

There was a small printout showing the eastern, western, northern and southern-most points in the continental United States. The display discussed the controversy around where the exact center of the country is, as well as the exact center of the Lower 48. It could be in any number of places (aka Kansas) depending upon how you do the math. There is a monument in Lebanon, Kansas but the display concluded that the center is too difficult to pinpoint. Not so the case with the easternmost point!

Another display showed an actual lighthouse lightbulb and a miniature fresnel lens. This helped me get a sense of how the lenses actually help extend the range of the light. (The beam of the West Quoddy light is visible for 15 to 18 miles at sea). The lighthouse light bulb on display, was impressively small.

Lighthouse Passport Program

We were about to leave the visitor center when my wife started pointing to small piece of paper tacked to the wall. “Lighthouse Passport Stamps – $1 Donation.” The visitor center intern helpfully explained the Lighthouse Passport Program. My wife wanted to get one. As she reached for her cash, I warned her that she was about to make it into a blog post. She thought for a minute, and decided that the passport was worth the price of a blog appearance. She knows I am going to get pretty excited about getting more stamps for her passport.

She stamped her new passport, and then noticed that they also had a stamp for the Lubec Channel Light. Since we had just come from Lubec, we asked the intern where the lighthouse was. “You can see it from town,” she told us. We hadn’t seen it, but town was not that far out of the way. My wife added that stamp to her passport and then we drove back to Lubec to find the lighthouse.

Lubec Channel Light

The fog and rain were pretty thick. We drove through town, keeping an eye on the water but we did not see the light. We circled a few times, and then found a small waterside park. We walked down the path to the beach and quickly scanned the horizon. Nothing. We scanned the beach once more and could just make out a large gray shadow in the channel – the lighthouse. The fog and rain were too thick to get more than a glimpse of a large, immobile gray blob. And so, we hopped in our car and head south toward home.

Other Nearby Lighthouses:
East Quoddy Head Light

The ranger at St Croix International Historic Site warned us to be careful about the tides if we hiked to the East Quoddy Head Light on Campbell, since high tide makes an island of the point. We found the parking lot and hiked to the cliff’s edge and looked across to see that the tide was in and covering several feet of the stairs down to the beach. We looked across at the island, and could barely make out a lighthouse on the island through the rain. Apparently this lighthouse is painted with a large red cross, but we couldn’t see this from our vantage point in the fog. The drive and scenery we could see was very striking.

East Quoddy Head Light - Barely Visible in the Fog
East Quoddy Head Light – Barely Visible in the Fog

Mulholland Point Lighthouse

Mulholland Point Light
Mulholland Point Light
We did see the Mulholland Point Lighthouse near the bridge to the USA. This lighthouse was decommissioned, rendered obsolete in 1962 when the bridge from Campobello Island to the United States was built. The navigational lights on the bridge now guide the traffic. This lighthouse was small and had a nice display about its history. I imagined this would be a lighthouse that Botho August from one of my favorite books, The Bird Artist, would live in. This lighthouse was active when the Roosevelts summered here, and I imagined FDR sailing a group of friends through the channel. We scanned the shoreline for seals and watched the tide stream out – impressively fast.

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