Long Point Lighthouse

When the saltworks settlement at Long Point began to shrink in the 1850s, residents didn’t just pack up and leave, they took their homes with them. Entire houses were placed on rafts and floated across Provincetown Harbor to the town’s West End, where some still stand today. By the Civil War, the once-thriving village of 38 fishing families had vanished, leaving only the lighthouse and two hastily-built forts that locals dubbed Fort Useless and Fort Ridiculous.

Neither fort is known to have fired a shot in anger. The lighthouse itself was rebuilt on the spot in 1875, a 38-foot brick tower replacing the eroding original, so it never took the same journey as its neighbors. Everything else on the point learned to swim. The lighthouse just stayed and watched.