Home
Programs & Resources
Collection Highlights
Artifact number: 1980.0768
Bramah & Robinson Lighthouse
Lighthouses are beacons that guide mariners through darkness, storms, and hazardous waters. This lighthouse once marked the first landfall for mariners travelling across the Atlantic Ocean. It was part of an extensive network of aids to navigation aids that helped make marine transportation and trade safe and efficient. After standing for 50 years at Cape Race, Canadian officials decided to replace it with a new and taller tower made of concrete. Since lighthouses were expensive to build and Canada had very a long coastline to cover, these officials chose to recycle the iron lighthouse. In 1907, they disassembled and moved the structure to Money Point on Cape North, Nova Scotia, to mark the entrance to the Gulf of St Lawrence. It stood there until 1980, when the government retired it from service and offered it to the Museum.