Scituate Lighthouse

The Massachusetts coast was a dark place two centuries ago. Boston Lighthouse had been lit for the first time in 1716, but it did not survive the American Revolution. The governing body that emerged from the war, that new nation formed on the strength of its belief in every man's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, rebuilt it in 1783. Just before the war, a new light station at the end of Duxbury Beach, on a headland called the Gurnet (named for a fish known by the Pilgrims back home in England), was erected in 1768 to guard Plymouth Harbor to the south.