Former Lighthouse Keeper Dick Duncan shines a light on the history of the Saugerties Lighthouse and its heroic rescue from demolition.

From crumbling disrepair to restored treasure, the 1869 landmark of the Hudson River is now a living museum thanks to the support of our very own community. Find out how it all got started, hear insider tales and have the chance to peek inside the tower, still a working aid to navigation for the mighty Hudson River.

Additional Activities: Pre-season guided tours by local Lighthouse Keepers between the hours of noon and 3pm.

Suggested donation $5

To address this question, I relied on Jim Crowley’s Lighthouses of New York. As it turns out, the answer is not clear-cut. Affixing a specific year is difficult since the first aids-to-navigation predated the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609. Native Americans lit signal fires as a guide. They also bent shoreline trees to mark treacherous areas of the river. Similarly, during the colonial era, local residents were enlisted to keep signal fires to aid the sloops, but this was inconsistent. In 1789, the US Lighthouse Establishment tried to organize the first navigational aid system by hiring locals as lamplighters to hang lanterns along the shore near dangerous spots. This, too, proved insufficient due to lanterns doused by foul weather or neglectful lamplighters.

Interestingly, in 1805, the Journal of the U.S. House of Representatives documents a petition from merchants and sloop-owners requesting “that piers may be erected and buoys fixed at such places in the river Hudson or on the shores thereof … to prevent the difficulty and danger experienced by the petitioners and others concerned in the navigation of the said river.”

Not until after the Erie Canal opened in 1825 did the Hudson River receive its first lighthouse. Built in 1826, Stony Point was the first lighthouse established on the Hudson, a more elaborate incarnation of the shoreline signal fires lit by Native Americans centuries earlier.

We awoke this morning to a winter scene in the river valley. A layer of snow coated rooftops and tree branches. Not unusual for this time of year. Even so, it came as a surprise during this unseasonable mild winter. This time last year, the river was thick with ice, and the trail was buried in snowdrifts. Today’s snow is not expected to last and is already dripping from the trees. Meanwhile, signs of spring are starting to appear. Our neighbors downriver reported the return of a mated pair of mallard ducks. Five years running, this pair has arrived at the onset of spring thaw, usually around mid-March. This year, they’ve arrived three weeks ahead of schedule without a spot of river ice to worry them.