A Station Saved: Wood Island Life Saving Station

I had the pleasure of writing about the newly restored Wood Island Life Saving Station for the September 3, 2026 edition of the Seacoast Scene newspaper.

My editor asked me to cover this story, and I’m so glad he did because I had a lot of fun visiting the island and writing about the station.

Sam Reid, the president of the Wood Island Life Saving Station Association, was kind enough to take me out on his boat to the island to interview him and check out the restorations.

I joked that I felt a little like the visiting journalist in Widow’s Bay, but thankfully the island was not cursed, and everything went well (although it was a little foggy that day, but nothing seemed to be in the fog).

The station and the island are beautiful, and Kittery Point is just breathtaking. I had never been to Kittery Point before and was really taken aback by the views.

I gathered a lot of info for the article and couldn’t fit it all in, so I decided to post whatever I cut out of the article here.

The station was built in 1908 and served as a base for surfmen who would go out and assist ships in distress. They were the predecessors of the current-day US Coast Guard.

Before it was a life saving station, Laura Calhoun, the executive director of the association, told me Wood Island was a quarantine island where yellow fever victims were quarantined before being allowed on the mainland.

After it became a life saving station, it was manned by about 10 surfmen. Reid told me that these surfmen were not volunteers and were instead employees of the U.S. Treasury Department. He said they usually spent two weeks on and two weeks off the island, and the station was usually unmanned in the summer.

The men slept in the bunk room upstairs and stored their belongings in the adjacent locker room.

Some of the exhibits and items on display at the station include the station’s original medicine chest from 1900, the original clock, and other items often used in life saving stations at the time.

The station also still has its original ice box, which now houses electrical equipment, and the marine railway, which has been rebuilt with metal tracks from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

After the station closed in 1948, the seawall eventually failed, and the station fell into disrepair by the 1970s.

The station was on the verge of demolition in 2009 when the town of Kittery decided it would be too expensive to demolish and instead voted in favor of a charity-led restoration. The restoration began in 2016 and took nearly 10 years to complete.

It’s really great to hear about a historic site actually being restored rather than demolished, so I was very pleased to visit the island and see what an amazing job the association has done.

The Wood Island Life Saving Station is open from Memorial Day through Columbus Day and is accessible by boat only.

Tours are available twice daily through the Portsmouth Harbor Cruises Thursday through Sunday and once daily on Wednesday and Sunday through the Gundalow Company.

Reid told me that they also allow private boats to dock at the island’s pier if they want to come and visit the station on their own. The pier can fit about four or five boats at a time.

The life saving station is also available to rent for both private and charitable events, and donations are accepted for ongoing maintenance and restoration projects.