Have you ever wanted to visit Pomham Rocks Lighthouse? Here's what it's like (2024)

Whether you're pedaling along the East Bay Bike Path or cruising through upper Narragansett Bay on a boat, it's hard not to stop and admire the picturesque Pomham Rocks Lighthouse, which sits perched on a small, craggy outcropping in the Providence River.

Built in 1871, it's weathered countless storms and fell into severe disrepair after it was decommissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard and acquired by ExxonMobil. But thanks to a dedicated group of volunteers, it's been meticulously restored to its original condition and is now open for tours until the end of September.

Visiting requires booking a ticket in advance and taking a 10-minute boat ride from the mainland. Once there, you can climb up the tower and take in the panoramic view of Narragansett Bay or get an up-close look at the rare, 225-pound antique Fresnel lens that's guarded by two security systems.

You'll also learn about the lighthouse's past inhabitants, like Tommy, who became known as "Pomham Light's Diving Cat" because he was so adept at catching fish from the rocks.

And you'll get a rare view into what it was like to live on Pomham Rocks in a previous century, when lighthouse keepers collected rainwater in a 4,900-gallon cistern, raised chickens and relied on kerosene lamps. The lighthouse now looks out at wind turbines, oil tankers and a massive condominium complex, but still feels like a world apart – with a working refrigerator from 1946 in the kitchen and walls painted in the original colors from 1871.

Former keeper provides link to past

"This thing replaced me," Dennis Tardiff joked as he gestured to a small, glowing red beacon during a recent tour.

Tardiff is the chairman of Friends of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse, an all-volunteer group that rescued the lighthouse from dereliction and likely destruction and began offering public tours in 2022. He captains the Lady Pomham II, the boat that ferries visitors to the island.

He was also one of the Pomham Rocks' last keepers. A photograph in an upstairs room shows him lowering the flag for the last time in 1974, when the lighthouse was decommissioned by the Coast Guard.

"It was bittersweet," he recalled.

Tardiff was 19 years old when the Coast Guard assigned him to Pomham Rocks, and admits that he found it "kind of boring." He and two other keepers took turns maintaining the Fresnel lens and manning the foghorn – which required living on the half-acre island for two weeks at a time, then returning to the mainland for a week off.

"I was too young to really appreciate it," he said.

Three years later, the Coast Guard replaced the historic Fresnel lens with a small marine beacon and shut down Pomham Rocks. For Tardiff, that meant moving up to the Coast Guard station in Newport, which he saw as "the real Coast Guard."

But decades later, he was drawn back.

Pomham Rocks' long history was nearly lost

Pomham Rocks light, which sits roughly 800 feet from East Providence's shoreline, was once among five lighthouses that guided ships up the Providence River. More than 150 years later, it's the only one left.

Until 1956, when the Coast Guard took over, it lacked electricity and was home to a series of civilian keepers and their families. The 2½-foot-tall Fresnel lens refracted the light from an oil lamp that had to be tended constantly, creating a beacon that was visible from about 12 miles away.

Turning on the kitchen sink meant using a hand pump to draw water from the cistern in the cellar, fed by the unusually wide gutters that wrap around the building's mansard roof. There were no bathrooms. The Coast Guard eventually installed indoor toilets, but those had to be manually flushed with buckets of water.

After the lighthouse was decommissioned, it was purchased at auction by ExxonMobil, which owns the terminal where oil tankers unload fuel just a few hundred feet away.

"They didn’t do anything with it," Tardiff said. The lighthouse was "virtually abandoned" for decades, he said, and became increasingly decrepit. In 2004, local residents formed Friends of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse and worked out a lease arrangement that would allow them to restore it.

"When they turned it over to us and we got a look at it, it was pretty pathetic," Tardiff said. The windows were broken, the plaster was falling in, and the tower "was leaning 7 degrees to the east."

"It was one storm away from falling in on itself, and taking the whole lighthouse with it," he said.

Returning the lighthouse to its original state, piece by piece

Tardiff began volunteering at Pomham Rocks in 2016, after his wife died. They'd gotten married while he was stationed at the lighthouse in the 1970s after meeting in Riverside during one of his breaks on shore.

It was the first time he'd returned in 42 years. By then, ExxonMobil had given the deed to the American Lighthouse Foundation, Friends of Pomham Rocks' parent organization.

During his Coast Guard years, the building's walls were slathered with "Navy gray" paint and its wooden floors were covered with thin carpet, as photographs on display show. But Tardiff and other volunteers have worked extensively to restore it to its original, more charming state.

Last winter, for instance, the interior was completely repainted. A volunteer, Alex Dias, dug through layers of plaster to find the walls' original colors, then matched them to the closest equivalents from Benjamin Moore.

The painstaking renovation of the lighthouse has now been underway for nearly two decades. Damaged floors, ceilings and walls had to be replaced in the early stages, which cost $1.5 million, and electricity had to be restored. Today, the building is in immaculate shape, but the work continues.

Recently, the gutters were reconnected to the cistern, allowing visitors to use an indoor bathroom and the small garden to be watered with a hose. The Fresnel lens, which had been shipped off to a museum in Massachusetts, finally made its return.

Among the tasks ahead: Replacing Pomham Rocks' aging wooden dock, which dates to 1939. The new dock will be a historically accurate replica of the original that was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938 – just taller because of sea-level rise.

"In the last two years, we’ve had water inundate the dock four times," Tardiff said. "That never happened before."

Unlike Newport's Rose Island Lighthouse, Pomham Rocks can't make money by renting out the lighthouse for overnight stays. ExxonMobil explicitly prohibited that in the deed, which also requires volunteers to make sure the island can be evacuated within an hour. (There's also a ban on pyrotechnics and restrictions on grilling.)

But even a brief visit feels like a complete getaway.

How to visit the Pomham Rocks Lighthouse

Tours of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse take place from June to September, and leave from Edgewood Yacht Club in Cranston.

The tour takes an hour and 45 minutes, which includes a brief talk from a volunteer docent and ample time for visitors to explore the lighthouse independently. The cost is $50 for nonmembers, or $35 for members.

Reservations are required and can be made at pomhamrockslighthouse.org/tours.

The island and its docks are off limits to visitors outside of regularly scheduled tours, and private boats are not allowed.

Friends of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse also welcomes the public to become members and join volunteer work parties, which take place throughout the summer months.