Many historians around the world are now writing about what they call, “Denial of History.” What they are referring to is, that while we are finally making small strides in preserving historic buildings, very little is being done to save and preserve the history associated with them.

This is especially true of lighthouse history. It seems that so much of our nation’s lighthouse history has disappeared, I wonder if much of it will ever be rediscovered.

There is probably a large amount of lighthouse history tucked away in the vaults of libraries, historical societies and attics. My guess is that most don’t even know it’s there. However, it is my opinion that most of it has been lost or destroyed forever, especially the history associated with lesser known lighthouses or lighthouses no longer standing.

However, we know there must be lots of lighthouse history to yet be rediscovered, especially photographs of the lighthouse keepers and their family members and

stories about them. In fact there are probably photos and memories even of many of the popular, well-known lighthouses that we have never published, because we don’t have the old stories and photos associated with them.

That’s where you can help us in locating and duplicating photographs of lighthouse keepers and family members, old newspaper stories about them, and memories of their lives at the lighthouses. Now-a-days, it is easy to make duplicates of old photos or they can be scanned at a high resolution and saved and emailed to us.

Let’s make 2007 the year of a new beginning to rediscover and publish our lost lighthouse history. However, we can’t do it alone. We need the help of all of

our readers to help us in our search for lost lighthouse history. We don’t want the information that is already on the Internet; instead, we need to find what has yet to be rediscovered. You can make a difference in doing away with the phrase “Denial of History, and change that to History Rediscovered.”

This story appeared in the Jan/Feb 2007 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.

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