Group wants to become Gurnet Light's new owner

Nov 01, 2023

PLYMOUTH - Plymouth Light Station/Gurnet Light is looking fora new owner. And the group already caring for the historic site hopes the Coast Guard will grant them ownership of the 7.8-acre property.

Project Bug and Gurnet Lights, Inc. President Dolly Snow Bicknell says her organization submitted a letter of interest to the Government Services Administration last week after the administration recently classified 10 lighthouses under its purview throughout the country as "excess property."

"There's an awful lot of history there, and we've been taking care of it since 1999," Bicknell said. "We would like to keep it and have it so people can go see it."

The National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act passed in 2000 allows nonprofits a chance to compete with local and state governments for former federal properties.

Six of the lighthouses, including Gurnet, are being offered to federal, state or local government agencies, nonprofits, educational organizations or other entities that are willing to maintain and preserve them and make them available, within reason, for educational, recreational or cultural purposes. The remaining four will be sold at public auction.

About 150 lighthouses have been transferred, 80 or so given away and another 70 auctioned, raising more than $10 million, since the act was passed, according to a release announcing the availability of the properties.

Other local lighthouses being offered for free include Warwick Neck in Warwick, Rhode Island, and Nobska Lighthouse in Falmouth.

While the organization is focusing now on Gurnet, it was first founded in 1983 to preserve Duxbury Pier Light, better known as Bug Light.

"The top of it was going to be torn down because it had been vandalized and was in bad shape," Bicknell said.

In its place the Coast Guard wanted to put up a fiberglass pole.

The group received a license from the Coast Guard in 1984 to maintain the property.

Like Gurnet now, Bug Light was deemed excess property in 2014. After an unsuccessful first pass that did not include enough of the required information, they gave it another go − and got it.

"The application is incredibly difficult. There is so much involved," she said. "We filed it again in 2015, and we received notice that we would be the owners of it," she said, adding that an official transfer ceremony was held in 2018.

Bug Light:Lighthouse has new owners

The group then set its sights on maintaining Gurnet in the late-’90s, albeit with some trepidation.

"We already had one lighthouse, and we weren't sure if we really wanted to take care of two," Bicknell said.

As with Bug Light, the Coast Guard granted the group a license in 1999 to maintain Gurnet, at which point they changed their name to Project Gurnet and Bug Lights, Inc.

The four-bedroom keeper's cottage on the site built in 1962 by the Coast Guard, meanwhile, was under the purview of another nonprofit.

"They didn't do a very good job and they didn't do many things," she said. "It did not go well."

After acquiring the license to maintain the cottage in 2005, which can accommodate up to 14 people, the group renovated it and began renting it out to fund upkeep of the site.

"That had been fabulous until COVID-19 came," she said.

As the pandemic receded, the threatened piping plovers moved in, making the entire property off limits to everyone − Coast Guard included − from May 15 to Sept.1.

Becoming the owners, rather than just caretakers, of Gurnet would mean the group could accomplish much more there, Bicknell said.

"The differences would be huge in the fact that we would then be able to get grants to do work," she said.

Erosion is a major problem at the site, she said, noting that the Coast Guard moved the lighthouse back 140 feet in 1998.

"We've lost 43 feet, I think, in in the last five years," she said.

The property also includes a dilapidated watch tower.

"It's now fallen within the last three months," she said. "It's fallen and is separating, so it's making the ground even more unstable."

Undertaking erosion-control measures would be easier if the group owned the site, she said.

"We have been trying to work on permitting, but there's no way we can get any grants until we own it, so it's been a Catch-22 situation," she said.

Bicknell said she assumes some other nonprofit or other entity will express interest in becoming Gurnet's new owners but added that her group is in an advantageous position.

"Hopefully we will get a chance to be the new owners, and we do have a pretty good track record," she said. "We have ownership of Bug Light, so, it would make sense to me."

Even if the group is granted ownership, the Coast Guard would continue to maintain the navigational aids including the lanterns, foghorns, and solar panels, which power the otherwise electricity-free structures.

There is lead paint on the structures at the site, which Bicknell said the Coast Guard will begin addressing in September.

The group submitted its letter of interest well ahead of the July 14 deadline. The actual application is due no more than 90 days after a site inspection, which can't happen until at least Sept. 1.

Bicknell is more than someone who just happens to like lighthouses.

Her father, Edward Rowe Snow, was also known as the Flying Santa, as he used to fly over the lighthouses at Christmas time to drop gifts to the lighthouse keepers, often with his wife and daughter Dolly in tow.

More:Flying Santa drops in

Bicknell uses a quote of his on the front of the group's literature.

"To almost every man and woman, there is something about a lighted beacon which suggests hope and trust and appeals to the better instincts of all mankind."

Like father, like daughter.

"Lighthouses are pretty special," she said.