Highland Light

Highland Light is a 66-foot brick lighthouse and historic light station on Outer Cape Cod in North Truro. It was Cape Cod’s first light station, and the 1857 tower still serves as an active aid to navigation. The keeper’s house, exhibits, and shop make the grounds worth a look even if you don’t take the tour.

The tower is climbed on a paid guided tour. Its narrow spiral stairs and ladder-like sections make it a poor fit if steep, confined climbs bother you. Tours usually run from early May through late October, but days and times shift with the season; check the current schedule before planning around the climb.

The station began in 1797, when George Washington commissioned Cape Cod’s first lighthouse. Its original 45-foot wooden tower stood more than 500 feet back from a 125-foot clay cliff. A brick tower replaced it nearby in 1831.

The present 66-foot brick tower, keeper’s house, and generator shed were built in 1857. An enclosed walkway links the tower to the one-and-a-half-story, L-shaped Queen Anne keeper’s house. Today, that house holds lighthouse exhibits and a gift shop, so there’s more here than a tower climb.

The steep clay cliff kept eroding, and by the early 1990s the station stood about 100 feet from its edge. In July 1996, workers moved the roughly 1,000-ton station 450 feet inland over 18 days. The light was switched back on November 3, 1996. The keeper’s-house exhibits and tour cover this unusual rescue.

Henry David Thoreau visited the light several times in the 1850s, then wrote an 1864 essay about it. His account connected the keeper’s hospitality with the light’s importance to mariners passing offshore.

There’s auto parking and a seasonal restroom at 27 Highland Light Road. You can photograph the exterior without taking the paid tour; frame the tower and keeper’s house together to show the light station as a working place, not just a tall white tower. A fence keeps visitors back from the eroding bluff, so use the lantern room for the high coastal view.