SOMERSET, N.Y. – Spending the holidays at home is wonderful, but sharing Christmas with family in a 130-year-old lighthouse is a once-in-a-lifetime memory.
Twice we’ve packed up the car and driven the seven hours from our home in Rhode Island to a small town in rural western New York state, where my wife and I grew up, to spend unforgettable vacations at historic Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse on Lake Ontario. Our most recent stay was last summer to attend a high school reunion, but our first, and most memorable, was celebrating a cozy Christmas there with two of our adult children, my wife’s brother and a family friend two holiday celebrations ago.
Six of us, single-file, lugged suitcases up a narrow, winding, wooden staircase to the living room. There, Christmas carols played from a radio, and in a corner next to a sun-drenched window, sat a small but festive Christmas tree, brightly decorated by the lighthouse caretakers with lights and ornaments.
| iF YOU GO Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse: Off Lower Lake Road in Somerset, N.Y., at Golden Hill State Park, a 40-mile drive from either the Rochester or Greater-Buffalo Niagara Falls airports. Reservations, www.reserveamerica.com or 800-456-2267. Accommodations: “The Cabin” or living area includes a 1930s-style living room, kitchen, one bathroom with clawfoot bathtub and wraparound shower curtain, and three bedrooms with queen beds. Maximum six people; available year-round, $150 nightly. Bring your own bed linens, towels and groceries. A concrete pier, often used for fishing, juts into the lake. In summer, minimum one-week stays required. After Labor Day, individual-day rentals are accepted. Nearby attractions: Niagara Falls; “Niagara County Fruit Belt” with roadside fruit stands in summer and autumn; nearby village of Barker, with a charming local drug store with a lunch counter and old-fashioned ice cream. |
From the kitchen window, we could see and hear the winter waves from the lake pounding the shoreline while the morning sun glistened across the water. Some winters here, the lake can be heaped with snow and ice for 20 or 30 yards out from the shore and the sun will dance on the ice. This particular Christmas was chilly, but we only saw snow once, and it was magical – gentle flurries arriving, as if on cue, Christmas Eve as we returned to our lighthouse home from a candlelight worship service in the nearby village.
We cooked a hearty breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon on the small gas stove each morning and at night climbed into big soft beds in the three bedrooms – two with views of the lake. The issue of six people sharing one bathroom solved itself, since at least two of the guests were early risers who enjoyed sunrises and brisk morning walks.
In our comfy Christmas confines, schedules melted away. We did as much or as little as we cared to. Part of the charm was having no telephone and no cable, just a small TV set with twisted rabbit ears that could pick up a few fuzzy channels, the best reception coming from a Canadian station across the lake. There were no video games, no Internet, only a small eclectic collection of inviting books, old-fashioned board games, playing cards and the types of conversations that take a family back to simpler times.
Wrapped in warm blankets on the sofa, sipping glasses of wine, we explored a journal of handwritten accounts by previous guests who detailed their fun-filled days and romantic nights spent here. Some let their imaginations play as they wrote of scary, stormy nights when the wind howled and the old walls and floors creaked. Before we left, we penned our own memories on the pages.
On those days when the caretakers opened the lower floor museum to visitors, we would climb the spiral steel staircase to the outdoor observation deck which wraps around the lantern room. Bundled in warm clothes, my wife and daughter hugged against the biting wind chill while enjoying a 360-degree view of the lake to the north and lighthouse grounds to the south.
Built in 1875 at a cost of $90,000, the stonework of Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse has proudly held its ground on the eroding shores of Lake Ontario for more than a century and a quarter. Its name comes from the location – a point on the lake in the town of Somerset, exactly 30 miles east of where the Niagara River joins Lake Ontario.
In the uppermost lantern room, a powerful six-sided Fresnel lens, turned by a clockwork movement of counterweights, could magnify a kerosene lamp to create a beacon visible for 18 miles, according to the tour guide’s handout. The beacon warned ships of the dangerous sandbar off the coastline. In later years, electricity replaced the counterweights and a 500-watt bulb replaced the kerosene lamp.
Until 1958, when the light was decommissioned and replaced by a steel tower and automated beacon, a succession of eight gallant keepers-of-the-light lived and labored at the lighthouse. Through pleasant summers, cool autumns and stormy winters, they ensured the light was turned on each night and the fog horn was sounded when needed. In between, they tended vegetable gardens, planted flower beds and raised families.
The last keepers were the parents of my late brother-in-law Bob Elmer. Osgar Elmer, a career service light-keeper who moved here from a lighthouse in Fairhaven, N.Y. with his wife Mildred, kept the Thirty Mile Point light burning from 1954 to 1957. They lived in the same second-floor quarters now restored and available for guests. An assistant keeper and family lived in the downstairs area, which is now the museum. On a few occasions, visiting as a youngster, I saw Osgar ascend that spiral staircase in his crisp Coast Guard uniform for the nightly ritual of turning on the light. Osgar and Mildred kept the lighthouse, its grounds and family living area spotless, always in readiness for a surprise inspection by the Coast Guard, which had taken over responsibility for Thirty Mile Point from the U. S. Lighthouse Service in 1935.
Over the years, as the dangerous sandbar off shore eroded, Thirty Mile Point’s purpose came to an end. By 1984, the U.S. government had surrendered the lighthouse to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Thirty Mile Point and its history became part of the National and New York State Registry of Historic Places; but without its keepers, the buildings fell into disrepair.
But Thirty Mile Point was eventually restored, thanks to the growing popularity of lighthouses, a 1986 grant, and hard work by two groups – Somerset Town Historian Lorraine Wayner and the staff at Golden Hill State Park, where the lighthouse sits, and a nonprofit organization of volunteers, The Friends of Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse.
In 1995, the U.S. Postal Service selected Thirty Mile Point as the Lake Ontario representative for its commemorative “Lighthouses of the Great Lakes” stamp series. Since then The Friends and New York State have championed the lighthouse, raising funds for continued restoration, holding an annual July Celebration Day, an October “Christmas at the Lighthouse,” and offering weekend tours.
The living area is heated toasty warm in winter and cooled by lake breezes or an air conditioner in summer. In warm weather, the grounds of Golden Hill State Park are dotted with RVs, camper trailers and tents as families enjoy swimming, boating, hiking, picnics and beautiful sunsets on Lake Ontario.
On December days, you’re more likely to have the view to yourself. It’s stark but beautiful as sunlight sparkles on the ice and snow near the shore. Spending the holidays here can be a special Christmas present for the family, and I think Osgar and the other light-keepers would be pleased to know that Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse is beautiful again, its history open to all.
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