Community comes out for first day of Ned’s Point tours

Oct 9, 2021

MATTAPOISETT — Community members from the Tri-Town and beyond came to Ned’s Point on Oct. 9 to participate in its first full day of tours since 2019.

With a crowded catwalk and a line that stretched nearly to the informational board stationed in front of Ned’s Point, Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 63 led visitors through the lighthouse and taught them about its near-200 year history.

As part of the tour, many visitors were able to use their hands to cast a shadow over the sensor that turns on the light, and see Ned’s Point in action.

“I turned on the light,” Sienna Collins said. Her brother Dominic added that “the view was really good from the top of the lighthouse.

And it wasn’t just kids enamored with the Lighthouse’s vantage point, overlooking Mattapoisett Harbor and the Elizabeth Islands.

“You could see far,” Mattapoisett resident Tom Nelson. He and his wife Lynn came to the lighthouse with their friends Nance and Dave Bernard from New Jersey, and said the group simply got lucky to find the lighthouse open for tours.

Inside the lighthouse, the auxiliary flotilla told the group about “lighthouse passports,” which are pamphlets that act as proof of which lighthouses you’ve visited.

“They’ve been to 100 lighthouses and didn’t know it,” Lynn Nelson said.

Tours of Ned’s point, conducted by Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 63, are open to the public and run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.