Barcelona Lighthouse

In the years after the Erie Canal opened, traffic on Lake Erie boomed, and boats needed safe harbors along the New York shore. In 1827 the little port at Barcelona, then part of the harbor called Portland, was declared an official port of entry, and Congress soon set aside money to build a light to guide ships in. The tower and a keeper's cottage went up in 1828 and 1829, built of rough fieldstone gathered nearby and set on a natural stone foundation right at the edge of the bluff.

The first keeper, Joshua Lane, was appointed in the spring of 1829 to tend the light for a small yearly salary. At first the lantern held a set of oil lamps backed by polished reflectors, the standard way lighthouses worked at the time. That would not last long. Just a couple of miles away, gas was seeping out of the ground, and it was about to give this ordinary harbor light a place in history.

Inland from the harbor, natural gas leaked from a crack in the rock near a stream. People had long known about the burning spring, a place where you could touch a flame to the ground or the water and watch it catch. Rather than treat it as a curiosity, someone realized that gas could be captured and carried to the lighthouse and burned there instead of oil.

So a pipeline of hollowed wooden logs was laid the two miles or so from the seep to the tower, and on the first of January in 1831 the Barcelona light was lit by that gas. It is remembered as the first lighthouse in the world lit by natural gas, and it is often called one of the first public buildings in the country to use the fuel at all. For a small stone tower on a young nation's western lake, that is a remarkable claim.

The gas supply proved uneven over the years, and eventually the arrangement ran its course. The federal government took the light out of service in 1859, in part because the harbor never grew into the busy port that had been hoped for. Its brief, bright moment as a technological pioneer had already earned it a lasting spot in the record books.

After it was decommissioned the lighthouse passed out of government hands and spent well over a century in private ownership, changing hands among various families who lived alongside the old tower. Through all those years the sturdy fieldstone stood up to the lake winds and the winters, and the little cottage remained a home. In 1972 the lighthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing both its age and its unusual story.

In 2007 the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation acquired the site, giving the historic light a permanent public steward. Though the tower no longer carries its original lens and is not used to guide ships, an arrangement with the town of Westfield keeps a light shining from it, so it still glows above the harbor much as it did nearly two centuries ago.

The lighthouse sits right along Route 5, the old lakeshore road, just north of the village of Westfield and a short drive east of the New York and Pennsylvania line. You can pull off and walk the open grounds around the tower and cottage; it is a quick, free roadside stop rather than a long visit, since the tower interior is not generally open. Take a moment to read the story, then look out over the water.

Just downhill from the light lies little Barcelona Harbor, with a small public beach and boat launch, a nice place to stretch your legs and watch the lake. The whole area is wine country, so you can easily thread the lighthouse into an afternoon of shoreline vineyards and harbor villages. Come near the end of the day if you can, when the sun drops toward the water and the old stone tower catches the last of the light.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.