- Matt Rosenberg, a full-time English teacher, commutes by paddleboat to maintain a Maine lighthouse.
- Rosenberg values the peace and tradition of lighthouse keeping despite its physical demands.
- Automation in the 1990s made lighthouse keeper jobs nearly obsolete in New England.
For the last 14 years, Matt Rosenberg has taken an unusual mode of transportation to his side gig after wrapping up his day job as a high school English teacher in York, Maine: A paddleboat.
Rosenberg is one of the last lighthouse keepers in Maine, where he maintains the Nubble lighthouse, a popular tourist attraction that draws a million visitors each year to York.
In 1889, there were over 70 lighthouse keepers throughout Maine that manned vital beacons of light warning sailors of hazardous conditions along the New England coastline. But automation in the 1990s made these full time jobs nearly obsolete.
Rosenberg shared with Business Insider what his duties are like on a day-to-day basis and why he loves his job so much.
His daily duties painting and repairing the lighthouse
The thousands of tourists that visit the Nubble Lighthouse aren’t actually allowed to step foot on the island. Rosenberg’s biggest challenge to keeping the lighthouse running smoothly is actually keeping it safe from the environment.
“We’re surrounded by salt water and in Maine we have a lot of fog and it carries a ton of moisture with it,” said Rosenberg, who is employed by the City of York. He said wood is constantly rotting and metal is turning to rust. He frequently has to repaint the lighthouse.
Matt Rosenberg
For Rosenberg, repairing the Nubble Lighthouse is a balance between updating outdated infrastructure and preserving its history of over 100 years.
“If we can’t keep up with the paint, the rust eats it, and we grind that out to stop the rust. But when you’re grinding out, you’re grinding out history,” said Rosenberg. “So we have to be really careful to preserve what’s there. Because once you lose that piece, it’s not the same lighthouse anymore.”
The Nubble Lighthouse sits on an island about 300 feet from the mainland, making it difficult to transport supplies and make repairs. Little setbacks like leaving a box of screws on shore become huge derailments to projects on the lighthouse.
“That’s going to take me more than an hour to get to the hardware store and back,” said Rosenberg of having to launch his rowboat to his car to run small errands. Patience is a key part of his job and seeing his work to completion.
Being a lighthouse keeper is also a physically demanding job for Rosenberg. He’s often alone carrying heavy building materials to the island across treacherous terrain.
“Where I launch the boat and land the boat, they’re very slippery, the crossing,” he added.
Matt Rosenberg
Rosenberg’s job is only seasonal from April through January because weather conditions off the island become unpredictable. Waves reach heights of over 20 feet during Nor’easter storms in March and April.
“Power lines are probably 70 feet above the water,” said Rosenberg. “We’ve had those taken out by the energy from the waves when they hit the shore and then go up into the power lines and twist them up and tear them down.”
Why he loves lighthouse keeping so much
Despite the challenges of being a lighthouse worker, Rosenberg loves his job and wants to continue for the next decade into his sixties, as long as he’s physically able. He is paid $21 an hour to maintain the popular tourist attraction, a duty he describes as a labor of love.
“A lot of jobs bring you stress,” said the 51-year-old. “This job brings you peace, because you’re spending so much time in a beautiful place by yourself.” Rosenberg occasionally sees wildlife from a 20-foot basking shark to a pregnant doe giving birth on the island.
Matt Rosenberg
Autonomy and self-reliance are big parts of Rosenberg’s daily life. He’s proud to have been part of the tradition of Nubble Lighthouse stewards from its earliest days.
“They didn’t have running water, they didn’t have modern heat at that early in the lighthouse’s history,” Rosenberg said. “Lighthouse keepers of that day were also the primary rescue squad for the vicinity.”
The Victorian-style, white-painted lighthouse with its gingerbread trim around the eaves stands out on the shore, a stalwart reminder of the past that is just out of reach of the public.
Matt Rosenberg
Rosenberg believes that the elusive nature of the lighthouse is what continues to draw around a million visitors each year to their small town of 10,000 people.
Foot traffic has generated $800,000 in gross sales annually at the gift shop, funding overhauls to the lighthouse instead of using tax payer dollars. The most recent preservation project cost around $450,000 over five years, according to Rosenberg.
The lighthouse has been the subject of many of Rosenberg’s posts on Instagram, where he shares landscape portraits of the lighthouse in different seasons and his day-to-day duties with thousands of followers.
“What I’ve been trying to do is give people the views of the lighthouse that they can’t have,” he said. “I think of it kind of like a snow globe where you just appreciate it in a different way, because you can’t touch it.”
