Library Exhibit, November 2020 Jamestown Lighthouses
From colonial days till the present, aids to navigation – lighthouse, foghorns, buoys, lightships – have warned mariners of the risks ahead as they entered Narragansett Bay. Jamestown itself was home to four lighthouses, two on Conanicut Island, one on Gould Island in the East Passage, and one on Dutch Island in the West Passage.
The new exhibit in the Jamestown Historical Society case in the Jamestown Philomenian Library contains souvenirs and postcards of the seven lighthouses. The JHS collection has over 50 postcards of the Beavertail Light originally built in 1749 and is the third lighthouse established in thirteen colonies. In 1856, an earlier tower was replaced with the current tower. For a complete history of the Beavertail Light, see Beavertail Light Station on Conanicut Island by Varoujan Karentz.
