Bearing certain resemblance to the turret of some medieval fortress, one could be forgiven for mistakenly assuming that Newport’s Castle Hill Lighthouse lent its name to the hill rising inland from its rocky, oceanfront perch. As it happens, though, the modest knoll beside Narragansett Bay was called Castle Hill at least as early as the 1860s, decades before the first of the lighthouse’s granite blocks were laid (perhaps it was the hill’s name that inspired the lighthouses design?).
In fact, it seemed for many years as if the idea of building a lighthouse at Castle Hill was doomed to fail. An 1875 attempt by Congress to buy land for the beacon fell through when wealthy cottagers nearby declined to sell. More than a decade passed before officials finally acquired the land from a new cottage owner, but progress stalled when he refused to allow builders to enter the site through his property. “I stand an excellent show of having my place ruined and nobody to foot the bill,” he complained, suggesting they avoid ruining his lawn by bringing their materials to the site on boats.
Negotiations continued for over a year before access over land was granted and construction could finally begin. The Castle Hill Light was kindled for the first time on May 1, 1890 and the ruby glow of its lamp still guides vessels to this very day.
Over the next couple weeks, I’m going to be processing all of my latest work from Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay. Much of my shooting time was spent at the beautiful Castle Hill Lighthouse on the southwest coast of Newport, but I also managed to work in Boyd’s Windmill.
Here’s a piece from that windmill which I was eager to develop ahead of the others. The title, “Simplicity”, really says it all. Between the silhouetted windmill vanes and the rich tones in the sky, the uncomplicated beauty encompassed in this piece resonated strongly with my first-hand impression of the windmill.
For the curious, Boyd’s Windmill was built just north of Newport in 1810 and harnessed the ocean breeze to grind grain for surrounding farmers.
Keep an eye out for more work from the Rhode Island coast over the upcoming months!
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When I saw some images of the Point Judith Lighthouse come through on the Instagram feed of another Connecticut-based photographer earlier this year, my reaction was immediate: “I need to go there!” But as if the scenery wasn’t going to be exquisite enough, the location of the Point Judith Lighthouse at the mouth of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay made this shoot even more exciting. Why? Despite the fact that Rhode Island is a neighboring state, and was for some number of years only about an hour’s drive away (I live a bit further away now), I had somehow never taken a single photograph there. And it isn’t as if I was intentionally avoiding the ol’ Ocean State. I suppose that I was just preoccupied with other subjects over the years; meanwhile, Rhode Island and all of its compact beauty somehow managed to slip through the cracks. That was all going to change with the Point Judith Lighthouse.
When I selected a date in February for the shoot, I entirely expected that it would be cold. What I could not have imagined was that the thermometer on my dash cluster would read -5°F as I headed east and crossed over the Connecticut border in the frigid darkness before dawn. I had planned for the worst, though, and was decked out from head to toe in three layers. Furthermore, I knew the oppressive winter temperature was just as much of a blessing as a curse: it was a pretty sure bet that I would have Point Judith entirely to myself.
Indeed, there wasn’t a soul to be found when I parked my car at the end of the windswept peninsula. And even though I had done some measure of research ahead of my visit, the scenery at Point Judith proved to be even more exciting than I could have imagined. Take, for example, the beautifully-smoothed boulders piled upon the shoreline in my pieces “Dawn on Point Judith” (at top) and “Narragansett Shores II” (above). Strange as it may seem, there just aren’t beaches that look quite like that in Connecticut.
The Point Judith Lighthouse stands upon the distant horizon in those photographs, but plays a more prominent role in the composition of “Point Judith Wintertide” (above). In this piece, wind-carved grooves in the snow weave through the beachfront beside the tower and the coastal landscape is steeped in the warm colors of dawn. Despite being over 150 years old and having guided seafarers for some six generations, the venerable Point Judith Lighthouse is well-maintained and practically looks as if it had been built less than a decade ago. In an era when tight government budgets can sometimes result in historic lighthouses decaying or being shortsightedly off-loaded to private parties (and lost to the public forever), its refreshing to see that the lighthouse at Point Judith features a level of care and accessibility that is befitting of an age-old maritime relic.
Just how important was the Point Judith Lighthouse in the hey-day of New England’s maritime era? Between June 1871 and June 1872, for example, the keeper at Point Judith kept a tally of every vessel that passed the Point: the final count exceeded 37,000! So although shipwrecks did still occur occasionally off Point Judith, sailors navigating in the vicinity were statistically rather safe thanks to the presence of this wisely-positioned navigational aid.
Oh, did I mention that it was pretty damn cold out there? “Sweet Dawn, Bitter Cold” (above) sums it all up. Only about a dozen feet from the breaking waves, these seashore boulders were glazed with a thick, smooth shell of opaque ice. To be at Point Judith on that February morning at dawn, seeing it entombed in snow and ice and raked by frigid winds blowing in from the Atlantic, I certainly found a renewed appreciation for the brutal elements endured by the mariners of old.
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