East Chop Lighthouse in Oak Bluffs: the 1878 cast-iron tower on Telegraph Hill, the Sunday sunset openings run by the Martha's Vineyard Museum, the semaphore and Chocolate Lighthouse history, and the bus stop and parking below the hill.
Ask anyone who lives on the Oak Bluffs side where to watch the sun go down and you will be pointed up Telegraph Hill. The East Chop Lighthouse stands on the bluff at the top, a white cast-iron tower barely forty feet tall that has watched the entrance to Vineyard Haven Harbor since 1878. It is the least visited of the island's lighthouses by day and the most companionable at dusk, when the lawn fills with people on blankets, a keeper from the Martha's Vineyard Museum props the door open on summer Sundays, and the ferries slide past below on their way in from Woods Hole.
The lantern room at dusk, the last light on the glass before the beacon takes over.
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The lighthouse sits on East Chop Drive, about a mile and a half northwest of the Oak Bluffs ferry landing, on the loop road that rings the East Chop headland. That loop is one of the island's favorite walks and easy bike rides, with the Sound on one side and the big shingled summer houses on the other, so the nicest way to arrive is on foot or on two wheels from town. Give yourself forty minutes walking from the harbor and you will get there with time to spare.
By bus, the Vineyard Transit Authority stops at the corner of East Chop Drive and New York Avenue; from there it is a short walk up the hill. Our bus guide has the routes and times from every town, and the buses are fare-free through June 30, 2027. If you drive, there is a small amount of parking along East Chop Drive and it goes early on sunset Sundays, so treat the car as the backup plan rather than the plan.
The road up to the lighthouse at sunset, the reason the lawn fills on Sunday evenings.
The Martha's Vineyard Museum, which has looked after East Chop since 1994, opens the tower on Sunday evenings around sunset from mid-June through the end of the summer. In past seasons the hours have run roughly 7 to 9 in June and July and 6 to 8 in August, weather permitting, with a keeper on hand and the door open for the climb. Admission has been $5 for adults; children under 12 and museum members go up free. The museum posts the exact dates for the year at mvmuseum.org, and it is worth checking before you plan an evening around it, because the season can shift and the tower sometimes closes for repair work.
The climb is short and the payoff is the view: Vineyard Haven Harbor and West Chop to the west, the Sound and the Cape across the water, and the ferries below. Outside the openings the grounds are a public park and you can walk right up to the tower any day of the year, which is how most islanders use it.
The memorial bench at the foot of the tower, the best seat on the hill if you get there first.
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The hill had a job before it had a lighthouse. In the early 1800s a semaphore station stood here, part of a chain of signal posts that relayed word of arriving ships up the coast toward Boston, and the name Telegraph Hill has stuck ever since. The first light came from a sea captain, not the government. In 1869 Captain Silas Daggett put up a lighthouse of his own on the point and advertised it to passing mariners as the Coaster's Light, asking ship owners to chip in for the oil. It burned in December 1871, was rebuilt and relit the following spring, and was finally bought by the United States in 1876 after Congress set aside $5,000 for a proper station.
The tower you see today went up in 1878: a conical cast-iron shell forty feet high, with a fourth-order Fresnel lens shining from 79 feet above the water. It was white to begin with. In the 1880s it was painted a reddish brown, and for a full century islanders knew it as the Chocolate Lighthouse, until 1988, when the heat and condensation the dark paint caused inside the iron tower persuaded everyone to go back to white. The light was automated in the 1930s, the keeper's house and outbuildings came down not long after, and in 1957 the land around the tower went to the town of Oak Bluffs as a park. The Fresnel lens gave way to a modern beacon in 1984; the tower itself still belongs to the Coast Guard, with the museum as its steward. Today it shows a green light every six seconds to boats making for the harbor.
The museum's history panel at the base of the tower tells the Daggett story and the chocolate years.
| Built | 1878, cast iron, 40 feet tall; first private light on the site 1869 |
|---|---|
| Light | Green, every six seconds, 79 feet above the water; still active |
| Openings | Sunday evenings around sunset, mid-June through summer, weather permitting; dates at mvmuseum.org |
| Admission | $5 adults; under 12 and museum members free; grounds free every day |
| Bus | VTA stop at East Chop Drive and New York Avenue, then walk up the hill; fare-free through June 30, 2027 |
| Parking | Limited, along East Chop Drive; walk or bike from Oak Bluffs if you can |
The lighthouse pairs naturally with the rest of Oak Bluffs. Walk the loop road out from the harbor in the late afternoon, sit on the lawn for the sunset, then drop back down into town for dinner on Circuit Avenue; our Oak Bluffs guide has the restaurants and the rest of the evening covered. If sunsets are the point of the trip, the sunset guide ranks East Chop against Menemsha, Aquinnah and the rest, and the shipwrecks story explains why a light was needed on this particular point in the first place. For the other four towers, start with our island lighthouses guide.
Benches along the bluff face the Sound; the show starts an hour before sunset.
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