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The lens that was once in the east tower of Maine’s Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse (Two Lights) is being removed after 18 years of display at the Cape Elizabeth Town Hall in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
The Town Council voted to give the lens back to the government because the town could not justify the stringent requirements placed upon it by the Coast Guard in order to move the lens, due to town hall renovations, to another location in the town hall, as well as the amazingly high cost of insurance just to keep the lens on display for public viewing.
So, the Town Council voted to spend $8,431 to hire Jim Dunlap of Lighthouse Lens and Restoration Corporation to disassemble the lens according to Coast Guard regulations and crate it up for shipment.
However, the lens, now valued by the federal government at $2.5 million, will remain in Maine, but much further up the coast at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.
So rather than being stored away in a crate in a government warehouse, it will go on display at the Maine Maritime Museum, which actively sought to take possession of it once they learned that it might leave the state.
Nathan Lipfert, the Museums senior curator, said in a press release, “Maine has more lighthouses than any coastal state - the Cape Elizabeth lens is an important technological artifact . . . They [lighthouses] are crucial to helping us understand the technology and economics of maritime trade in earlier centuries. They have become cultural artifacts as well, and many people are interested in them.”
However, the Maine Maritime Museum will have to abide by the Coast Guard’s stringent preservation requirements as well as their outrageous insurance valuation.
Since the Maine Maritime Museum concentrates largely on ships and ship building, the Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse lens will now become the largest lighthouse artifact in the Museum’s collection.
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