- I am Maureen.

And I'm Matthew.

And we are the summer caretakers here on Seguin Island Light.

- It is one of the oldest lighthouses in Maine.

It was commissioned by George Washington in 1795.

There's been a lighthouse on the island since then, and there's been a few different iterations of the lighthouse.

It was wooden at the start.

They replaced it with a stone lighthouse in the early 18 hundreds.

And then 1857 was when these structures were built.

And the Maine Lighthouse that holds the large first order Fornell lens that is still in place today.

- When we talk about first order, we're talking about the, the size of the lens.

So it's the largest fornell lens that they made for lighthouses.

And a lot of them don't exist anymore as lighthouses have been decommissioned.

The lighthouse lenses were given away where they've just disappeared and we don't know where they've been.

This lens has been in continuous use since 1857, and it magnifies the light inside up to 500 times.

So with just one lamp, you can throw 20 miles out to sea.

- This tower was built for that fennell lens that was basically saving lives all over the world.

And it became evident to that Seguin needed that, given the increased commercial traffic.

In, in, in that part of the 19th century was made in Paris, France, and imported as many of the other early lenses were.

The French had a really good formula for making that clear glass, and they also knew the complexities of the mathematics of bending light and refracting it into that perfect focal plane.

And that's what's up there now.

And it's a great legacy.

That's the largest lens in active navigational use north of Block Island.

Between Block Island and Canada.

We are the highest navigational aid on the coast of Maine.

Not because it's a high tower, but because we're at 180 feet above sea level.

It's an unusual geology in the island.

It, it's got a very distinctive silhouette.

- It's still used by sailors and by fishermen.

But I think even more importantly than that, there's the historical aspect and then there's the local cultural aspect.

So anybody who's a sailor or a boater, they have an affinity for their local lighthouse.

You know, it's, it's the last thing you see when you leave and it's the first thing you see when you come home and it becomes like a big part of the experience of being out on the water.

- We arrived out on the lighthouse on June 1st, and we're gonna be around through September 15th.

Our days are kind of filled with lots of chores, lawn maintenance, hauling water, hauling our groceries, meeting guests as they come up, giving them tours of the lighthouse and the museum.

- This is one of those really unique places that really does feel like you're at the end of the world, even though it's just a couple miles off shore.

You know, it's a little bit complicated to get here, but when you get here, you just see, you know, the, you know, the amazing tower, you know, the history that's here.

You know, that dates all the way back to revolutionary era, you know, and just the view from here is phenomenal.

I don't, I don't know that there's another place in Maine that you can see from Cape Elizabeth all the way to Monhegan Island and beyond.

So that's a pretty phenomenal location just, just to be able to see all that.

- It's a really interesting island in that we don't really see many mammals spending a lot of time here.

We really mostly have snakes and snails, lots of insects.

That's really what we see out here.

But it's also a nesting bird habitat.

So when we arrived there were nesting gulls, nesting Canada geese.

We have barn swallows that come in and out all the time, always trying to get into the buildings.

We've seen goldfinches.

There's just a lot of migratory birds that come through.

- The Seguin Tramway was put in in 1895, basically to start hauling tons and tons of coal up to the top of this ridge and, and getting it as close as they could get it to the fog signal building down here, which was at the time boiling water to make steam, to blow the steam whistles that had come to be in the 1870s.

And, you know, also a major way to get supplies up to the residences and, and all the people that were living up here.

It's a wooden structure that is currently being carefully assessed to see how can we pass that on to the next generation as a unique artifact of an earlier day of life on the island and life in the light lighthouse service.

And we'd like to get it running again.

- This is a very historical place.

It's on the National Historic Register.

I believe it's a very important place on the coast of Maine.

This area was always very dependent on ships and in the 17 hundreds, 18 hundreds, huge sailing vessel volume, in and out of Bath, Maine in the wintertime, taking Ice South, bringing food goods north, taking trees, lumber, south Charlton Savannah.

Miami's ice supply came out of Maree Bay up this river.

So there was a tremendous amount of traffic.

And this has been here and guiding Mariners, this has guided Mariners along this coast for a long, long time.

In fact, a lot of Maine derives much of what it has because this guiding light up here on this lighthouse was here and prevented more wrecks from happening, trying to go from the open ocean to the very narrow Kennebec river opening.

So that holds a place.

It, it's a special thing and we have it and we can maintain it with some help and we can show it to other people.

And I think that is what drives me.

The, the fact that it's here, the fact that we can keep it, the fact that we can get other people to see this magnificent place.

- It's when the fog rolls in, it can come really fast.

It's sometimes it's like a Stephen P novel, the way it just takes over the island.

It's always exciting 'cause we never know what we're gonna get.

And it's always beautiful - Naturally, you know, just as human beings, we're always drawn to light, you know, just to be able to see those things that are out there in the distance when we're out by boat and just to know that those lighthouses are there, it's just a wonderful kind of physical reminder.

And when everything else goes down, you know that it's there.

- The history is extraordinarily underfoot.

It's a unique way to step onto an historical place, certainly as, as vivid and as real as Mount Vernon or a Monticello.

This is the classic main story out here.

It's a lighthouse.

It's in a, a beautiful spot.

The horizon is all around us here.

And you, you come away with a unique experience for sure.

It's - Just part of our life and, and it's been a part of our life.

When you add to that, the history of the place and then the magic, when you stand up here and get this view, you're not at a mu museum looking at recreation of history.

This is historical ground.

It is the history.