Two Eastham Lighthouses Sold for $3.50. One Tower Became the Kitchen.

Some winters, Nauset Light Beach gives something back.

When the surf strips sand off the beach and the profile drops low, the brick foundation of one of the original Three Sisters can show up down near the water. Old brick, in the wrong place. A lighthouse that used to stand on top of the bluff, now down where the waves are.

Everything else about the Sisters has moved too. Mostly inland. Once for three dollars and fifty cents.

Three Women in White Dresses

In 1838 the government lit three small masonry towers on the Eastham bluff, each about 15 feet tall. Three lights, so a captain offshore could tell this stretch of coast from Chatham's pair and Highland's single beam.

From the water they looked like three women in white dresses with black hats. The name stuck.

Not everyone was sold on the arrangement. A government inspector wondered why the coast needed three lights at all. A carpenter who looked over the work called it "of the meanest character and description."

The bluff settled the argument. By 1892 the brick towers were too close to the edge, and three wooden towers went up about thirty feet back. Those were 22 feet tall.

Kitchen Downstairs, Bedroom on the Landing

In 1911 the government decided one light was enough. The middle tower was moved back and attached to the keeper's house. The other two went dark.

Then they went to auction. The National Park Service tells it with an exclamation point of its own: the two decommissioned Sisters "were sold at a public auction to Helen M. Cummings for $3.50!"

The towers were hauled over to Cable Road and joined into a summer cottage called The Towers. Later it was a dance studio.

Bill Burke described the layout to Cape Cod LIFE. One tower held the kitchen and living room, with a bedroom upstairs on the landing. The other tower had two bedrooms.

Somebody on Cable Road once made breakfast inside a lighthouse.

The Red-Topped Tower Came From Chatham

The single light left on the bluff didn't last either.

Chatham had twin lights, and in 1923 the north tower, built in 1877, was taken apart, carried up the coast, and rebuilt in Eastham. That is Nauset Light. The red-and-white tower that stands for Eastham on postcards, mugs and T-shirts started out as Chatham's.

It kept moving. In November 1996, with the cliff closing in, the whole lighthouse went about 300 feet back, across the road, in one piece.

Back Together in the Pines

The Park Service spent years collecting the family. It bought the Cummings cottage in 1965. In 1975 it bought the old middle tower, which had spent decades attached to a house of its own.

By 1983 all three were reunited inland, in their original configuration, set back among the pines. They were restored through the 1980s and opened for their first public tour in 1989.

Walk in from the Nauset Light Beach lot now and there they are. Three short white towers with black caps, standing in a row in the woods, nowhere near the water they were built to watch.

Two lighthouses. Total auction price: $3.50.

Three Sisters Lighthouses | 751 Cable Road, Eastham · Cape Cod National Seashore
A short walk from the Nauset Light Beach lot. Grounds are generally accessible year-round; parking and ranger programs follow Seashore rules and seasonal schedules. NPS site page