Amidst the rock-strewn shoreline and the drumlin meadows of Lovells Island resides a unique history that is part of the kaleidoscopic makeup of the Boston Harbor Islands. The remains of an oil shed are the only fragments from the time the island housed the Lovells Island Range Lights. These lights served as beacons for marine vessels traveling in the South Channel to reach Boston.
Constructed on the north end of the island in 1903, the two range Lights stood 400 feet apart and had slightly different elevations. A seven-foot-high wooden walkway connected the two lights, and it also led to the lightkeeper’s house and oil shed. Mariners used the lights as navigation tools as they passed through the rocks and shallows of Boston Harbor.1 They knew that if they had the correct bearings, the lights would perfectly align with one behind the other. If they did not align, the captains knew they had to correct their course.2
Charles Jennings, former keeper at Boston Light on Little Brewster Island, became the keeper of the Lovells Island Range Lights in 1919. His son Harold became the last keeper of the Lovells Range Lights and the family lived on the island until 1939.
Due to the expansion of Fort Standish, the lights were ordered to be extinguished and torn down.3
Footnotes
1 “Lovells Island Range Lights" Accessed April 6, 2023, Lovells Island Light Station.
2. Nathaniel Bowditch the American practical navigator: an epitome of navigation (Bethesda: Paradise Cay Publications, 2004), 64..
3. Harold B. Jennings, A Lighthouse Family: Growing Up at the Lovells Island Range Lights. (Hingham: Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands, 2015).
Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service