BlockBefore
Photograph of Boston Light
Photograph by MBTafan2011, CC BY 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Boston Light

A National Historic Landmark. Built in 1716. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. 17 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1892.

From the record

One of 345 National Register listings published here for Suffolk County · listed in 1966 · category: Structure · built in 1716 · a National Historic Landmark.

Sources: the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service · the Wikipedia article

The listing

  • Address. Little Brewster Island, Boston Harbor, Boston
  • When was it listed? October 1966
  • Category. structure
  • Also known as. Lighthouses of Massachusetts TR (AD); Lighthouses of Massachusetts TR
  • When was it built? 1716
  • National Register reference number. 66000133 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Then and now

1892 to 1997

The ground this property stands on, surveyed 105 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet covering Boston Light, surveyed 1997
Topographic sheet covering Boston Light, surveyed 1892

Fires near this property

18 since 2015

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 18 fires within 5 miles of Boston Light between 2015 and 2018, burning about 4 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause Fires
Debris and open burning17
Misuse of fire by a minor1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
1 September 2017Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
29 August 2016Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlHULL
23 July 2017Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
2 July 2016Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlHULL
3 June 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
24 June 2017Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
24 June 2016Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlHULL
16 June 2016Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlHULL

Every fire recorded in Suffolk County

Newspapers printed here

8 papers

8 papers published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.

Maps showing this location

17 surveys

United States Geological Survey topographic sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the middle of the area the National Park Service maps for this listing, then testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Sources for this property

National Archives recordThe nomination case file for reference 66000133 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia articleCommunity-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Suffolk CountyAll 345 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

  • Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
  • Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
  • How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
  • Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.