Winter Harbor Lighthouse, also known locally as Mark Island Light, was built in 1856 at the cost of $4,000 for the purpose of marking the approach to Winter Harbor between the Schoodic Peninsula and Grindstone Neck. Nine keepers and their families lived on the island during the next 78 years. The keeper′s house was rebuilt around 1876.

In 1934 the lighthouse was decommissioned and sold into private hands, and four years later Richmond and Reginald Robinson bought it. Richmond, a Maine native, wrote two books about life on Mark Island, Winter Harbor and the Winter Harbor Lighthouse. In the 1950s the property was sold to Rene Prud-Hommeaux, an author of children’s books. It was later owned for a time by playwright Gerald Kean.

The most recent owner is writer and retired banker William C. Holden III, who spent about $650,000 to buy and restore the property. While living on Mark Island Holden has written several novels. He’s renovated the lighthouse so that it’s in its best shape in years. “I don’t feel like I own it. I feel like a caretaker, like I am entrusted with it. It’s a very special place,” Holden has said.

According to LandVest, the company handling the sale, the three-bedroom wood frame keeper’s house attached to the brick lighthouse tower includes a large kitchen with a cookstove, dining room with a wood stove, large living room with a kerosene stove, and one-and-a-half bathrooms. The upstairs bathroom features a claw-foot tub. There’s even a music room with an organ.

The lighthouse has served as a private haven for a series of writers, and it is now for sale once again at an asking price of $1.25 million.

Once coffeed up, I continue east on US highway 1 until arriving at West Gouldsboro and here take state highway 186 south to Winter Harbor and see the Winter Harbor lighthouse on Mark Island, of which I stop to take photos.