Nantucket Lighthouses: All Six and Which Ones You Can Visit

How many lighthouses are on Nantucket?

Nantucket has six lighthouses, and three of them are towers you can walk up to today: Brant Point, Great Point and Sankaty Head. The other three are smaller harbor aids, the Nantucket Harbor Range Lights, the Nantucket Cliff Range Lights and the Nantucket Beacon. One island, three real towers, two of them easy to reach without a vehicle.

• Brant Point Lighthouse, harbor entrance, ten minute walk from town
• Great Point Lighthouse, far northern tip, over sand vehicle or a long hike
• Sankaty Head Lighthouse, Siasconset bluff, reachable by road or bike
• Nantucket Harbor Range Lights, channel aids
• Nantucket Cliff Range Lights, channel aids
• Nantucket Beacon, a minor light near the harbor

Brant Point Lighthouse, the one everyone sees first

If you searched for a single Nantucket lighthouse, this is almost certainly the one. Brant Point Lighthouse sits on the sand spit at the entrance to Nantucket Harbor, and every ferry passes within a few hundred feet of it.

It is also very short. The small white wooden tower shows a red light, and it is often called the shortest lighthouse in New England.

The station itself is old. A light was first placed here in 1746, which makes it one of the earliest in colonial America, after Boston Lighthouse on the mainland side of the bay. Storms, fire and shifting sand took tower after tower, and by most counts no other American light station has been rebuilt so many times. The record of the station reads like a list of replacements.

There is a tradition attached to it. Passengers toss a penny overboard as the boat passes Brant Point on the way home, to make sure they come back.

Getting there is simple. From the wharf it is a flat walk of about ten minutes. The short causeway out to the tower is open, and the beach beside it is a good spot to watch boats line up for the channel.

Great Point Lighthouse, the hard one

Great Point Lighthouse stands at the northern tip of the island, at the end of a long, thin sand barrier about seven miles from town. It is the most dramatic of the three and the one most visitors never see.

The first light went up here in 1784. The stone tower that replaced it stood until a storm brought it down in 1984. What you see now is a replica, rebuilt two years later and built to take the weather.

The land around it is protected. The drive crosses the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, and the tip is part of the Nantucket National Wildlife Refuge. Nesting shorebirds can close sections in late spring and summer, so check before you commit a day to it.

How to reach Great Point

1. Bring or rent a four wheel drive vehicle. A two wheel drive car will bury itself.
2. Buy an over sand vehicle permit before you set out.
3. Air down your tires at the gatehouse and carry a shovel, a jack and a board.
4. Allow an hour each way, longer on a busy summer weekend.
5. If you would rather not drive it, look for a guided refuge tour in season.

Walking is possible but long and fully exposed, with no shade and no water along the way. Most people who try it on foot once take the tour the next time.

Sankaty Head Lighthouse in Siasconset

Sankaty Head Lighthouse is the red banded tower on the bluff above Siasconset, on the east side of the island. Lit in 1850, it carried one of the first large Fresnel lenses used in the United States, and sailors called it a blazing star because of how far out it could be seen.

Erosion nearly finished it. The bluff kept retreating toward the base, so the whole tower was picked up and moved back from the edge, onto land beside the golf club. That move is the reason it is still standing. The history of the tower and its relocation are well recorded.

The grounds are open and the view down the bluff is the best on the island. Tower climbs happen on a small number of days each year, run by the local preservation trust, so do not build a trip around getting inside.

Siasconset is roughly seven miles from town. The ride out on the bike path is flat, and the island shuttle runs the same route in season.

The range lights and the Nantucket Beacon

The last three entries confuse people, because they do not look like lighthouses at all.

A range light works as a pair. The front light is low and close to the water, the rear light is taller and set further back. From the deck of a boat you line one above the other, and while they stay stacked you are in the middle of the safe channel. Drift to either side and the two lights separate.

That was the job of the Nantucket Harbor Range Lights and the Nantucket Cliff Range Lights. Small structures, no gift shop, easy to walk past without noticing.

The Nantucket Beacon is the sixth entry, another modest harbor light rather than a classic tower.

One more thing worth clearing up. The Nantucket Shoals, off the south and east of the island, were guarded for decades by lightships rather than by a lighthouse. Those vessels were anchored offshore, so they are not part of the island count.

A one day Nantucket lighthouse route

Walk out to Brant Point in the morning, soon after the ferry lands. Then take a bike or the shuttle to Siasconset for Sankaty Head in the afternoon, which puts the sun behind you for photos. That covers two of the three towers in a single day with no car.

Great Point deserves its own half day. Sort the permit or book the tour in advance.

If you want more of the same coastline, Gay Head Lighthouse on Martha’s Vineyard was also pulled back from a collapsing cliff, and it makes an obvious second island stop.

Where to go next

Use the Massachusetts lighthouses map and list to plan the rest of the trip, since Cape Cod and the Vineyard sit an hour or two away by boat. Sources for every image on these pages are listed on the photo credits page.