Last updated: November 18, 2025
Place
Lovells Island Range Lights
United States Coast Guard
Quick Facts
Location:
Boston Harbor
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No
Amidst the rock-strewn shoreline and the drumlin meadows of Lovells Island resides a unique history that is part of the kaleidoscopic makeup of the Boston Harbor Islands. The remains of an oil shed are the only fragments from the time the island housed the Lovells Island Range Lights. These lights served as beacons for marine vessels traveling in the South Channel to reach Boston.
Constructed on the north end of the island in 1903, the two range lights stood 400 feet apart and had slightly different elevations. A seven-foot-high wooden walkway connected the two lights, and it also led to the lightkeeper’s house and oil shed. Mariners used the lights as navigation tools as they passed through the rocks and shallows of Boston Harbor.1 They knew that if they had the correct bearings, the lights would perfectly align with one behind the other. If they did not align, the captains knew they had to correct their course.2
Charles Jennings, former keeper at Boston Light on Little Brewster Island, became the keeper of the Lovells Island Range Lights in 1919. His son Harold became the last keeper of the Lovells Range Lights and the family lived on the island until 1939.
Due to the expansion of Fort Standish, the lights were ordered to be extinguished and torn down. However, today, the oil house still stands, along with some of the posts that supported the raised walkways between the lights. An archaeological survey in 2007 found that Lovells Island has eroded so much that remains of both towers have disappeared and the house’s foundation is at the water’s edge and rapidly being washed away.3
Footnotes
- "Lovells Island Range Lights," accessed April 6, 2023, Lovells Island Light Station.
- Nathaniel Bowditch, The American practical navigator: an epitome of navigation (Bethesda: Paradise Cay Publications, 2004), 64. THE AMERICAN PRACTICAL NAVIGATOR.
- Harold B. Jennings, A Lighthouse Family: Growing Up at the Lovells Island Range Lights (Hingham: Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands, 2015); Jeremy D'Entremont,"History of Lovells Island Range Lights, Boston Habor, Massachusetts," accessed November 18, 2025, Lovells Island Range Lights history - NEW ENGLAND LIGHTHOUSES: A VIRTUAL GUIDE; Nancy S. Seasholes and Timothy L. Binzen, 2008 Archeological Overview and Assessment of the Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area: Volume 1. Archaeological Services at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.