Front:
13830
LEGO
25
97780
OSTS
70
hY HEAD, MAINE
APR
26
1990
20066
WASHI
DC
Back:
WEST QUODDY HEAD, MAINE
First Day of Issue: April 26, 1990
First Issue Location: Washington, D.C.
In the American Light-House Guide of 1850, author
Robert Mills described the West Quoddy Lighthouse —
located on Passamaquoddy Head, the easternmost point
of the United States — as a “harbor light ... seen at a
distance of seven leagues in clear weather ... Attached to
this lighthouse is a bell weighing one thousand pounds,
which in foggy weather will strike ten times in a minute,
and may be heard at the distance of five miles in calm
weather." The fog bell placed at West Quoddy Head was
one of the first along the coast of Maine. The keeper at the
lighthouse was paid sixty dollars extra a year to ring the
bell in fog to warn ships away from the treacherous Sail
Rocks. Even so, a particularly demanding sea captain by
the name of Joseph Smith, upon surveying the lights of
Maine in 1837, was displeased with the bell's tenor and
did not hesitate to pose the grander idea: “a sharp-toned
bell of four thousand pounds weight, struck by machinery
properly constructed and proportioned to the bell."
GHTHOUSE
No. 90-17
PRESERVATIO
italos
OFFICIAL MAXIMUM CARD
©1990 The Maximum Card Collection
A Division of Unicover Corporation • Cheyenne, WY 82008-0007
Original painting by Dennis Lyall
