Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse — everyone calls it Two Lights — is the most misunderstood light station in southern Maine. There were once two towers here, both still stand, and neither is open to anyone. The bigger trap is the park: you cannot see either lighthouse from Two Lights State Park, despite the name and despite what most travel pages imply. Here is where the view actually is.
The thing to get right before you drive out
Two Lights State Park (4.7 from 1,578 Google reviews) sits at 7 Tower Drive on the Cape Elizabeth headland. It is a genuinely good park — 41 acres of open ledge and spruce with the Gulf of Maine in front of it — and it has no view of the lighthouses it is named after. Trees and property lines have closed that off.
The view is from the turnaround at the end of Two Lights Road, about a mile away, where the road stops at the water beside The Lobster Shack. From there the east tower stands close and clear above the rocks. That is the shot people drive to Cape Elizabeth for, and it is not in the park.
Set expectations from there:
- Neither tower is open. The east light is an active, automated Coast Guard aid to navigation, and access to the station is prohibited.
- The west tower is a private house. It was decommissioned a century ago and has been in private hands ever since. The keeper's dwellings are private residences too.
- You view both from public road and public shoreline only. Do not walk up driveways. This is a residential neighborhood that has spent decades absorbing lost tourists.
The clearest evidence that people arrive with the wrong expectation is the Google listing for Cape Elizabeth East Lighthouse, which carries a 2.3 rating from 4 reviews — an outlier on a coast where lighthouses routinely sit at 4.7 and above. Nothing is wrong with the lighthouse. People simply could not get to it.
Why there were two
Before radio, a ship's officer identified a light station by what it looked like. A single fixed light on this stretch of coast could be confused with Portland Head Light to the north or Wood Island Light to the south, and confusing them puts you on the rocks. The answer was to build two towers 300 yards apart and give them different characters — a fixed light in the east tower, a revolving one in the west. Seeing two lights instead of one told you exactly where you were.
The original pair went up in 1828 as rubble stone. They were taken down in the 1870s and replaced with the conical cast-iron towers standing today, each 67 feet tall and about 129 feet above the sea. In 1924 the Lighthouse Service ended the practice of multiple lights at one station nationally, and the west light was switched off for good. The east one has run ever since.
The west tower was later sold into private ownership and was for a time owned by the actor Gary Merrill. It is still someone's home. That is the whole reason there is no visitor center, no gift shop and no stairs to climb here.
The Hopper connection
Edward Hopper painted this station twice — Lighthouse Hill in 1927 and The Lighthouse at Two Lights in 1929 — and the second became one of the best-known American paintings of a lighthouse, later reproduced on a U.S. postage stamp. If the angle in your head is a white tower and a keeper's house seen from below against a hard blue sky, you are remembering Hopper rather than a photograph.
What to actually do at Two Lights State Park
Go anyway. The park is better than its lighthouse problem suggests, and it is one of the finest picnic spots on the Maine coast.
- The ledge. Broad, tilted shelves of rock drop from the picnic area to the water, with open Atlantic beyond. On a windy day the surf here is loud and worth the trip on its own.
- Battery 201. Between the parking lot and the shore sits a concrete gun battery from the Cape Elizabeth Military Reservation, built to defend Portland and Casco Bay in the Second World War, with circular gun emplacements on either side. The bunker is sealed, but stone steps take you onto the top of it for the view.
- The observation tower. A six-story concrete spotting tower stands nearby, also sealed. It is not climbable, and it is a strange and good thing to look at.
- Short walking trails loop the headland. There is no beach here and no swimming — for that, Crescent Beach is five minutes away.
The Lobster Shack, and the honest verdict on it
The Lobster Shack at Two Lights (4.3 from 3,711 reviews) sits at 225 Two Lights Road at the end of the point, next to the view you came for. Order at a window, carry your tray to a picnic table on the rock, eat with the surf below and the tower behind you. It is seasonal and it is exposed — there is very little indoor seating and a cold, wet day is genuinely unpleasant.
The 4.3 rating is lower than most Maine institutions of its stature, and that is fair: the wait at peak times is long and the location is doing some of the work. It is still the right lunch here. Our full Lobster Shack guide goes into timing. Nearby, the small overlook listed as On The Rocks at Two Lights holds 4.7 from 247 reviews.
Building a Cape Elizabeth day
Two Lights is twenty minutes from Portland and ten from Maine's most famous lighthouse. A sensible loop:
- Portland Head Light (4.8 from 16,744 reviews) at Fort Williams Park first, early, before the lots fill. Bite into Maine (4.8 from 804 reviews) runs a truck in that park.
- Two Lights State Park and the Two Lights Road turnaround next, with lunch at the Lobster Shack.
- Crescent Beach State Park (4.6 from 1,110 reviews) or the quieter Kettle Cove State Park (4.8 from 801 reviews) to finish, if you want sand.
The Cape Elizabeth town page covers the rest of the peninsula, and lighthouses near Portland maps the five within easy reach of the city.
FAQ
Can you visit Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse?
Not up close. The east tower is an active automated Coast Guard light with public access prohibited, and the west tower and keeper's houses are private residences. You can see the east tower well from the public turnaround at the end of Two Lights Road, and from the water on a boat tour, but you cannot walk to it or climb it.
Can you see the lighthouse from Two Lights State Park?
No. This surprises almost everyone. The park is named for the station but has no view of either tower. Drive on to the turnaround at the end of Two Lights Road, beside The Lobster Shack, which is where the view is.
Why is it called Two Lights?
Because there were two towers, 300 yards apart, lit with different characteristics so mariners could tell this station apart from Portland Head Light and Wood Island Light. The practice of using multiple lights at one station was ended in 1924 and the west light was retired; both towers still stand.
Is Two Lights State Park worth visiting?
Yes, on its own terms. It has open rock ledges over the Atlantic, some of the best picnic ground on the coast, short headland trails and the sealed remains of a Second World War gun battery and observation tower. Just go for the shoreline and the history, not for a lighthouse view.
