Half a million people a year come to York, Maine just to stare at something they can’t touch

The Nubble’s island you can’t reach

You can’t get to this lighthouse. That’s part of what makes it so hard to stop looking at.

The Nubble sits on a 2.8-acre chunk of granite about 100 yards off the coast of York, Maine, separated from the mainland by cold Atlantic water.

Half a million people make the trip to Sohier Park every year to stand on the shore and look across at a lighthouse they’ll never set foot on. Somehow, that only makes it more compelling.

A century of shipwrecks before anyone built a light

Mariners started asking for a lighthouse at Cape Neddick as far back as 1807.

An 1837 proposal got rejected because officials figured there were already enough lights in the area. Then, in 1842, the bark Isidore wrecked near the cape and killed everyone on board.

Congress eventually came around, putting up $15,000 in the 1870s to get the job done. On July 1, 1879, the Cape Neddick Light Station finally came on for the first time.

Cast iron walls, a Fresnel lens and 88 feet of reach

The tower itself stands 41 feet, but because it sits on a high rocky island, the light burns 88 feet above sea level and carries 13 nautical miles on a clear night.

The walls are brick-lined and sheathed in cast iron, built to take whatever the Maine coast throws at them. Inside, the original fourth-order Fresnel lens still works.

It’s one of only eight left in Maine’s lighthouses.

Walk the railing up top and look at the stanchions, each one topped with a 4-inch brass replica of the lighthouse itself.

Five buildings packed onto a 2.8-acre rock

For a place this small, the island holds a lot. Beyond the tower, there’s a six-room keeper’s house connected to the light by a covered walkway added in 1911, a red brick oil house built in 1902, a wooden workshop, and a boathouse with rails running straight down to the water.

Getting supplies out there wasn’t easy.

A cable trolley stretched from the mainland to the island, and anything that needed to cross came over by that line.

No electricity, no plumbing and nothing but the sea

Thirteen keepers and their families lived on that rock between 1879 and 1987. They kept the light burning, maintained the grounds, and weathered some brutal Maine winters.

Electricity and indoor plumbing didn’t arrive until 1938, more than 50 years later. Families kept cows and chickens on the island and filled out meals with local seafood.

One keeper lost his job in 1912 for running a side ferry operation, charging visitors ten cents a ride to the island while the light went unattended.

The seven-year-old who rode a basket over the water to school

The supply cable that crossed from the island to the mainland had a basket for moving gear.

In 1967, Coast Guard keeper David Winchester started putting his seven-year-old son, Rickie, in that basket and sending him across to school every morning.

A photo of young Rickie in his knit hat, riding over the open water, ran in newspapers coast to coast.

The Coast Guard shut it down fast and put a new rule in place: no more families with school-age children on the island.

Mr. T swam to shore every day for mice

The island had a cat. His name was Mr. T, also known as Sambo Tonkus, and he weighed close to 20 pounds.

He became a local celebrity not for his size but for his habit: he swam from the island to the mainland and back, multiple times a day, to hunt mice in the rocks along shore.

He was around long enough to serve under at least two keepers. People would come just to watch for him, timing their visits to catch him in the water.

A photo of this lighthouse is now in interstellar space

In 1977, NASA launched the two Voyager spacecraft, each carrying a Golden Record loaded with images and sounds meant to represent life on Earth.

One of the roughly 116 photographs on that record shows Nubble Lighthouse.

It travels alongside images of the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal, billions of miles out in interstellar space right now.

Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 carry identical copies of the record, and neither is coming back.

How a town in Maine became the lighthouse’s keeper

The Coast Guard automated the light in 1987, ending more than a century of people living on the island.

The lighthouse landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, and the Town of York took over on a lease in 1989.

On Dec. 18, 1997, York became the permanent caretaker of Nubble Lighthouse through the Maine Lights Program. Today, the town’s Parks and Recreation Department keeps the island and everything on it.

Every November, the whole island gets wrapped in light

On the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, the lighthouse, keeper’s house, and other buildings go up in white Christmas lights, more than 1,230 feet of rope lighting in all.

The tradition started in 1987 when a local woman donated lights in memory of her husband and neighbors helped string them up. The lights stay on every night through the holiday season.

There’s also a summer version called “Christmas in July.”

The town no longer holds a big gathering at the park because the crowds got too large and parking became too tight.

Seals in the water and a lighthouse six miles out

The waters around the island pull in harbor seals, sunfish, and double-crested cormorants. Great black-backed gulls and herring gulls work the rocky shore year-round.

Divers go down into kelp forests and find lobsters, and the water stays clear enough to make it worth the effort.

From Sohier Park, on a clear day, you can also pick out Boon Island Light sitting about six miles offshore in the Atlantic. It looks like a thin stick rising from the water.

Tide pools and a rocky beach just down the road

Cape Neddick Beach sits close by with tide pools you can poke around in when the water pulls back. Long Sands Beach and Short Sands Beach are both nearby if you want more room to stretch out along the coast.

The whole stretch of shoreline around York gives you enough to fill a day or two without backtracking.

Start at the Nubble, work your way down the coast, and by the time you circle back, you’ll have a hard time picking a favorite spot.

Visit Sohier Park in York, Maine

Head to 11 Sohier Park Road in York to see the Nubble up close. The park stays open year-round, and parking is free with about 50 spaces.

The welcome center and gift shop run seasonally from early May to mid-October, and whatever you buy there goes toward keeping the lighthouse and park maintained. Get there at sunrise or sunset if you can.

The light on the tower and the rocks hits differently at those hours than at any other time of day.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• America’s first sunrise hits a candy-striped lighthouse in this forgotten corner of Maine
• A 31-foot lumberjack guards this Maine city hiding horror lore and Civil War graves
• Granite swimming holes, fresh-catch lobster, and zero bridges — welcome to Vinalhaven, Maine