America's Landfall: The Lighthouses of Cape Cod, Nantucket & Martha's Vinyard

For more than 250 years after the first lighthouse was built on Cape Cod, Nantucket & Martha‘s Vineyard, no book had ever been written specifically about the beacons along this shoreline. During that period, more than 40 lighthouse guided mariners through these treacherous waters, and they comprised a concentration of beacons greater than any other in the entire world. America’s Landfall was the first book to chronicle these particular lights that became not only a symbol for this region, but also a display of our nation’s progress. Illustrated with more than 75 historic photographs and nautical charts, this guide recounts just how it was that these beacons came to be and why it is that the few which remain are worth preserving.

Donald W. Davidson is a popular maritime historian who lives and writes on Cape Cod.