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The United States Coast Guard has announced that they no longer want Boston Harbor Lighthouse, the site of America’s first lighthouse.
Under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, the General Services Administration has been assigned the job of finding a new owner for the lighthouse, which under the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 1989, stipulated that the lighthouse would always remain a staffed light station.
This ends the Coast Guards’ eighty-one-year management of the most historic light station in the United States. Boston Harbor Light Station was first established by the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1716 on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor, in close proximity to the Town of Hull. The federal government took possession in 1790 and the U.S. Coast Guard assumed control in 1939.
Boston Harbor Lighthouse, on Little Brewster Island, is within the boundaries of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, which includes 34 islands and peninsulas in Boston Harbor. The recreation area is managed through a collaboration of 11 different agencies, including federal, state, and nonprofits that make up the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership, a federally-legislated body that oversees the park’s management, any of which could take over ownership of the lighthouse.
Other possible new owners could be the National Park Service itself, or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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