New York - Barcelona (Portland Harbor) Lighthouse

This lighthouse and dwelling are located on a bluff off Portland Harbor, Lake Erie, Barcelona, NY. Both were built of split field stone, native to the area. The tower is forty-feet high with a twenty-two foot diameter base which tapers up to ten-feet in diameter at the top. The walls are three and a half-feet thick at the base, and graduate to two-feet thick at the top. At the time of construction in 1829, eleven stationary oil-lamps were installed.

Later that same year the contractor, Judge Thomas Campbell, knowing that gas lights were being used successfully at Fredonia, became interested in the possibility of using gas instead of oil for the lighthouse lamps. On land near the lighthouse a "burning spring" was located, and that plot was purchased. The presence of the "burning spring" and the inflammability of its product had been known long before settlement of the county, according to records of French explorers, and from an early survey of the township.

Gas was piped about three-fourths of a mile from the spring to the lighthouse in wooden pipes, and then to the top of the lighthouse in iron pipes. On July 5, 1830, using the original lamps, gas lights were turned on in the lighthouse, thereby making the Barcelona Lighthouse the first lighthouse in the world to be lit by natural gas.

In 1859 use of the lighthouse was discontinued. According to the deed, the land on which the lighthouse was built was to revert back to the original owner at such time it was no longer needed for a lighthouse. At the time of my visit in 2001 this was a private residence.