One of the most delightful short hikes in the Hudson Valley – the half-mile nature trail out to the Saugerties Lighthouse through the Ruth Reynolds Glunt Nature Preserve – remains an undiscovered gem to many. That’s because it wasn’t until the 1990s that volunteers from the Saugerties Lighthouse Conservancy built the boardwalks and bridges that make the historic Hudson River beacon accessible on foot. If you’ve heard about how lovely a spot it is and have been meaning to pay a visit, you now have an even more compelling reason: Much-needed repairs to the 1869 structure have been completed.
The recent renovation project was made possible with assistance from the State of New York and the National Maritime Heritage Grants Program, administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. These grants are funded through proceeds from the sale or scrapping of inactive, obsolete government-owned vessels. The grant covered half of the project expenses, and donations helped cover the remaining cost, including a generous contribution from the Kauffman family, descendants of the longest-serving keeper at the Saugerties Lighthouse.
The most striking new change to the structure is the addition of handsome copper rain gutters and downspouts, not yet weathered at all. If you’ve been to the lighthouse before, you may recall seeing a roof drainage system disappointingly assembled from PVC pipe. That eyesore is all gone now. “The Lighthouse Conservancy took it over from the Coast Guard in the 1980s. It had been abandoned for 30 years,” explained Patrick Landewe, who has been the lighthouse keeper since 2005. “They made massive renovations back then, but on a shoestring budget that didn’t cover copper downspouts. The PVC pipes weren’t historically appropriate.”
Photographs on display in the museum room at the lighthouse tell a vivid tale of the herculean task that volunteer preservationists had faced in the 1980s to restore the building after three decades of disuse. The masonry was so deteriorated that a wooden framework had to be built around the tower while the brickwork was stabilized and realigned. “All the floors on the first floor were rotted out,” Landewe recalled as he conducted a tour of the building, pointing out the more recent improvements, both interior and exterior.
The rescue work done in the 1980s transformed a ready-to-topple pile into a structurally sound building once again, with aesthetic improvements to the interior that made it possible to rent out several of the rooms as a bed-and-breakfast with stunning views of the river and the Catskills. But more work needed to be done, primarily to the lantern room at the top of the tower. Though the glass panes had all been replaced during the original renovation, three of them needed a redo. “They cracked during an ice storm three winters ago. The ice accumulation on the glass was nearly an inch thick,” said Landewe. He credited professional glaziers from Mor Glass of Catskill with doing that replacement work.
Local contractor LaBounty Painting, installers of the new copper exterior drainage systems already mentioned, also patched and repainted the lantern room inside and out, as well as the tower stairwell. The LaBounty crew replaced the deck of the fog bell platform, setting the stage for expert woodworker Jim Miron to reconstruct the wooden housing that protects the original clockwork apparatus of the fog signal. “Jim lives just up the hill. He did the work in his garage,” Landewe said.
The old bell system is no longer functional, having been replaced with modern electronic signal equipment, just as the beautiful 1854 Fresnel lens that used to shine the light of an Argand oil lamp ten nautical miles up and downriver has given way to a plastic lens lit by a ring of solar-powered LEDs. (You can still admire the old lens, indoors in the museum room.) But the clockwork bell-ringing mechanism, powered by hanging weights, is still a fascinating piece of steampunk-era machinery. It’s now preserved in a weathertight box atop the tower, with a new curved roof to shed the rain. Miron stripped its original brass fittings of paint and polished them to a bright shine. “He used cedar, so this will last for decades,” noted Landewe.
The trail to the Saugerties Lighthouse is open daily from sunrise to sunset for hiking to the confluence of the Esopus Creek with the Hudson River. It’s important to check the tide table at www.saugertieslighthouse.com/tide-table-2 before visiting, since a section of the trail is underwater at high tide. Wooden decking built over the foundation of the original 1835 lighthouse now supports picnic tables with a splendid river view, open on weekdays only.
The lighthouse interior is open for guided tours on Sunday afternoons from June through August. The two-bedroom bed-and-breakfast is open Thursdays through Sundays year-round, often booking up many months in advance; visit www.saugertieslighthouse.com/accommodations to learn more about how to reserve it.
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