Reedy Island Range Rear Lighthouse – One Shot Story

I was finishing out my roll of Arista-EDU-400 film in an Argus C3, and this light house looked very forlorn on a slightly overcast winter day here in Delaware, USA.

The lighthouse is one of several lights constructed to guide vessels into Philadelphia via a new channel dredged into the Delaware River in the early 1900’s. At that time business people in Philadelphia felt they were shorted by the lack of a deeper channel through the river and bay, and to address this conundrum a Joint Committee on the Improvement of the Harbor of Philadelphia and the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers was formed. This committee argued that the Army Corps of Engineers should dredge a new channel in the river, with the following reason

“The importance of this improvement to the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, and the great West, can hardly be overstated. The Delaware River is the natural maritime outlet of an area of over 54,000 square miles, with a population of nearly 7,000,000 people. This area covers the manufacturing, coal, iron, steel, oil, and shipbuilding centers of the United States; and without a proper channel to the sea, the movement of these products to the markets of the world is embarrassed, and the cost of transportation is greatly increased.”

To that end dredging for a new 10 meter deep, 100 meter wide channel began once Congress approved the plans in 1899. As the new channel did not match the old one, the Lighthouse Service was forced to erect additional lights or relocate existing ones and funds were allocated to do so over time.

Hence we were given Reedy Island Rear Range Light, with its brother sitting at the waters edge. Two parcels of land where the lights stand were purchased for the new Reedy Island Range. In February of 1904 temporary lighting from a locomotive lamp on a long pole provided warning and guidance to mariners sailing home to new capitalistic gains. The temporary light at Reedy Island Rear was replaced by the current structure in 1910 after the initial plan was justly thwarted by mariners who objected to the relocation of a lighthouse on the east side of the river to the west side of the aforementioned river.

My photo was made on a whim when I saw this angle of the tower. Reedy Island Light is still in use, albeit automated, and the keepers house burned down in 2002 the remains of which can be seen in the bottom of the photo.

I developed the film in Cafenol-Delta and scanned the negative with my mirrorless camera and for some reason I like the sprocket holes now and the loud DING that the Argus makes.

I’ll be posting some recent photos to my new instagram account with more coffee developed film.
instagram.com/phenolandfilm

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