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Photograph of Gay Head Light
Photograph by Williamwaterway, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Gay Head Light

Built in 1799. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.

From the record

“Gay Head Light is a historic lighthouse located on Martha's Vineyard westernmost point off of Lighthouse Road in Aquinnah, Massachusetts.”

Wikipedia article Gay Head Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.

one of 11 National Register listings in Dukes County · listed in 2017 · category: Structure · built in 1799 · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Dukes County.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

  • What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
  • Address. 15 Aquinnah Cir., Aquinnah, 02535
  • When was it listed? 2017-03-16
  • Category. structure
  • Also known as. Lighthouses of Massachusetts TR
  • Township. Aquinnah town
  • When was it built? 1799
  • National Register reference number. 87001464 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Specimens collected near this property

12 of 5,358 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 5,358 specimens collected within 10 miles of Gay Head Light between 1860 and 1975: 3,705 Animalia, 1,158 Plantae, 266 Chromista, 150 Unrecorded, 50 Fungi, 28 Bacteria, 1 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A AND P STARRETT, A., A. C. Mathieson and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Image SpeciesYear Collected by Where, as recorded
A photograph of the species Apeltes quadracus, not of this specimenApeltes quadracus (Mitchill, 1815)1860D. JordanPenikese Islands
A photograph of the species Bufo fowleri, not of this specimenBufo fowleri Hinckley, 18821860unknownPenikese Island
A photograph of the species Gasterosteus aculeatus, not of this specimenGasterosteus aculeatus Linnaeus, 17581860D. JordanPenikese Islands
A photograph of the species Menidia menidia, not of this specimenMenidia menidia (Linnaeus, 1766)1860unknownPenikese Island
A photograph of the species Acteocina canaliculata, not of this specimenActeocina canaliculata (Say, 1826)1871United States Fish CommissionOff Gay Head
A photograph of the species Actinococcus subcutaneus, not of this specimenActinococcus subcutaneus (Lyngbye ex Hornemann) Rosenvinge1871W. G. FarlowGay Head
A photograph of the species Anguilla rostrata, not of this specimenAnguilla rostrata (Lesueur, 1817)1871U.S. Fish CommissionVineyard Sound
A photograph of the species Astarte crenata, not of this specimenAstarte crenata (J.E.Gray, 1824)1871United States Fish CommissionOff Gay Head and Edgartown
A photograph of the species Astyris lunata, not of this specimenAstyris lunata (Say, 1826)1871United States Fish CommissionGreat Harbor, Gay Head [=Aquinnah]
A photograph of the species Centropristis striata, not of this specimenCentropristis striata (Linnaeus, 1758)1899B. BeanMenemsha Bight
A photograph of the species Sterna dougallii, not of this specimenSterna dougallii dougallii Montagu, 18131899Doe, C EDukes County
A photograph of the species Sterna paradisaea, not of this specimenSterna paradisaea Pontoppidan, 17631899C. E. DoeMASSACHUSETTS: Dukes County

All 5,358 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Sources for this property

National Archives recordThe nomination case file for reference 87001464 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia articleCommunity-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Dukes CountyAll 11 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.
  • Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.