AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Great Captain Island is a 17.2-acre town-owned island sitting about a mile off Greenwich, Connecticut, in the western Long Island Sound. A short ferry hop or a private boat ride brings you to a crescent beach, a bird sanctuary, woodland trails and—rising above a scatter of glacial boulders—the handsome 1868 granite lighthouse that has become the island's signature landmark.↗↗↗
The appeal is its compactness and variety: in a single afternoon you can swim, picnic, hike the shoreline paths, watch nesting egrets and herons, and stand beside a National Register-listed light station, all within a few acres and with the Sound stretching out to the horizon.↗↗
A lighthouse you can almost reach out and touch
At the southeast corner of the island, facing the open water, stands Great Captain Island Light, built in 1868 of rough-hewn gray granite in the pattern of a keeper's dwelling with the lantern tower rising straight out of its ridgepole. It is the same standardized design the U.S. Light-House Board used at nearby Sheffield Island and Morgan Point, an efficient post-Civil War solution that kept the keeper close to the light during storms.
