The Portland Breakwater Light, affectionately known as Bug Light, was a South Portland landmark long before lending its image to the city’s logo.

The 24-foot-tall white beacon celebrates its 150th birthday this year.

The iconic lighthouse, modeled after a Greek monument built in 4th century B.C.E., was built in 1874 and opened a year later, years after the original wooden lighthouse fell into disrepair. 

After a devastating storm in 1836, the city of Portland began building a breakwater in the harbor. Sailors complained about the danger of navigating around the wall without any guidance, so, in 1855, with $3,500 from Congress, the city added the original structure, a 10-foot tall octagonal wooden tower with a fixed red light, at the end of the barrier.

It was this original tiny lighthouse that earned the nickname “Bug Light,” because it was “cute as a bug,” according to Kathy DiPhilippo, executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.

The lighthouse’s successor, made of cast iron and 14 feet taller, still stands today, retaining its nickname.

After 34 years of lighthouse operation on the breakwater, a keeper’s house — a two-room wooden structure — was built in 1889.

The breakwater was not designed to support a keeper’s house, so to add that structure, a foundation that protruded over the edges of the rocks was built. The outhouse was just a hole in the foundation that emptied directly into the ocean. Raymond Holbrook, the son of lighthouse keeper Elias Holbrook, wrote in his memoir that “a draft of wind blew up through the shaft at high tide. We were very careful to check the wind and tide before going out there!”

Until the house was built, lighthouse keepers battled the elements daily to cross the nearly 2,000-foot breakwater to get to work. Handrails were added in 1886, but for many years, lighthouse keepers traversed the slick, icy causeway without any support. On particularly violent weather days, they crawled on their hands and knees as they went back and forth to keep the light going. 

“If it had to be lit in a storm, they still had to go,” DiPhilippo said. “It was a treacherous job for a while.”

Originally, the light was a fixed red light, but in 1878, it was replaced by a revolving beacon. Powered by a clock-like mechanism of pulleys and weights, a metal cover with a hole rotated over the light using the power of gravity. Initially, it took six hours for the weight to reach the bottom of the lighthouse, so a keeper had to brave the swelling seas at least four times a day to raise it again. In its later years, the mechanism was moved to the exterior of the light, extending the rotating time from six to eight hours.

The lighthouse was electrified in 1934, powered by a cable that ran from Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse. The keeper there flipped a switch to turn Bug Light on and off, effectively eliminating the need for a second keeper. The keeper’s house was destroyed a year later. 

During the beginning of World War II, Bug Light went dark to avoid detection by enemy ships, aircraft and U-boats. In 1943, Cushing’s Cove was filled in, shortening the length of the breakwater and doing away with the need for a lighthouse to alert passing ships about a ledge that was no longer a hazard. Bug Light was abandoned as an active light, and as the area became a heavy industrial waterfront, the structure was left to the elements.

In the early 1970s, Howard Wright, a longtime lover of the lighthouse, volunteered to clean up the inside, which had been destroyed by vandals. General Electric, the owner at the time, launched its own restoration mid-decade.

The lighthouse returned to city ownership in 1985. By 1988, the South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Rotary Club, with the help of a federal grant, spearheaded a restoration valued at $70,000. 

The city and the Rotary Club entered into a memorandum of understanding shortly thereafter, and the Rotary Club still maintains and runs tours through the lighthouse and the surrounding 8.78 acre park.

“We’re totally invested in this wonderful treasure,” said Sue Sturtevant, chair of the Rotary Club’s committee that is organizing the celebration. The lighthouse was ceremoniously relit as a navigational aid in 2002, and now its 250-millimeter optic light uses solar power.

The Rotary Club is the one throwing the birthday party for the beloved lighthouse. And it received a fresh coat of paint in early July, “so that it’s really looking good for its birthday,” said Sturtevant.

The family-friendly event will go from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 26.

Festivities will include crafts, games, speakers, a book sale, photography and more. Wright will be an honored guest with his own table, showing the photographs he took of the light in the early 1970s and the artifacts he found within the light.

Writer John Reinhart will help visitors write poems to the lighthouse; actors dressed as lighthouse keepers will provide colorful anecdotes about life at Bug Light; and local photographers will show and sell their prints of the beacon captured in different seasons throughout the years.

There will also be activities specifically geared toward young visitors, like a story walk, coloring station and the opportunity for children to build their own craft lighthouses.

The lighthouse will not be open for tours, but visitors can get a peek inside during the Bug Light Car Show on Sept. 3 and for Maine Lighthouse Day on Sept. 13.