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By Laura Sitterly, Reporter for The Times Record
Maine’s Halfway Rock Light Station sits atop a jagged pile of rocks off the coast of Harpswell, where it stood neglected and battered by the elements for decades.
Then, in 2015, a Freeport entrepreneur and historic preservationist bought it and started a restoration.
That work by Ford Reiche has now been recognized by a national historic preservation group. After receiving numerous other accolades, including the American Lighthouse Foundation’s 2017 Keeper of the Light Award.
Reiche was one of three selected for this year’s National Maritime Historical Society Distinguished Service Award.
Nautical enthusiasts gathered at the New York Yacht Club in October 2024 to recognize Reiche and the other 2024 honorees: Dr. Sylvia Earle, a marine explorer; and John B. Hattendorf, a naval historian, for their contributions to the preservation of maritime heritage.
Reiche expressed gratitude and appreciation at being in the same company as previous award recipients Walter Cronkite, Ted Turner and two U.S. Navy secretaries.
“The work I have been able to do for Maine’s lighthouses has been personally gratifying,” Reiche said. “Even still, this award is an honor.”
Reiche has distinguished himself by restoring several buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, most notably the Halfway Rock Light Station.
“Ford exhibits the kind of preservation ethic that the society works to promote in all people,” said Catherine Green, president of the National Maritime Historical Society, citing Reiche’s 2018 book Halfway Rock Light Station. “Through documentation of this nationally significant property, [he] exemplifies the heart of a true preservationist.”
The 1871 conical granite tower, located 10 miles off Portland, sits at the mouth of Casco Bay, halfway – hence the name – between Cape Elizabeth to the west and Cape Small to the east.
Halfway Rock was a “stag lighthouse,” deemed by the government to be unfit for families – the harshest wave-swept stations were only managed by men, Reiche said.
By 2012, the building had become one of the nation’s most endangered lighthouses. Its windows and doors were nearly all broken, birds had nested inside, and debris and water had surged throughout.
In 2014, the federal government offered the property for free to nonprofit organizations, but those groups needed more resources to tackle the project. The following year, Reiche purchased the property at auction for $283,000. He quickly assembled a team to restore the exterior and reconstruct the interior spaces to reflect its original design.
“Thanks to Ford, seafarers will continue to be protected from this dangerous rock,” said Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., Maine’s state historian and Reiche’s cousin. “The proud stone tower will continue to battle the breakers from the other end of the Earth.”
A businessman and self-taught historian, Reiche has restored four buildings and two railroad stations – the Gilead Railroad Station, built in 1851, and the Grand Trunk Railroad Depot in Yarmouth, built in 1906. But his work isn’t over.
Last Spring, when the federal government announced it was giving away another aging offshore beacon, Harpswell’s Little Mark Island Monument, Reiche’s group, the Presumpscot Foundation, began working with the town to acquire the property.
Little Mark juts from the water a mile from the tip of Bailey Island, its distinctive stone chimney reaching 55 feet above the waves. In 1927, a light was added to the top.
The building requires minimal restoration, Reiche said. If his group obtains the property, he aims to repair the cracked stone atop the tower and remove the bushes growing from the masonry. It would be his fifth project on a site listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
After two massive storms in January 2024, Reiche and Bob Trapani Jr., the American Lighthouse Foundation executive director, used a helicopter to assess damage to 23 of Maine’s lighthouses, including Halfway Rock and Little Mark.
Their footage was compiled in a three-minute video mentioned at the National Maritime Historical Society award dinner as a reminder of the importance of fortifying historic coastal structures.
“I find myself drawn to architecturally or historically important sites,” Reiche said. “The significant damage caused to a full third of Maine’s lighthouses, as a result of January’s storms, is a warning sign that climate change is serving up a whole new set of challenges.”
This story appeared in the
Jan/Feb 2025 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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