Visit The Last Remaining Maritime Signal Tower In The US!

The integrity and architectural significance of the Portland Observatory is well documented through its listing as a National Historic Landmark and National Civil Engineering Landmark. However, the tower is so much more than these recognitions!

Join a passionate, knowledgeable docent for a 45 minute guided tour where you will be fascinated by Captain Lemuel Moody (the builder) and his family, hear why this place is “NOT A LIGHTHOUSE,” and learn more about the tower’s place in the rich, unique maritime history of Portland (Maine). After climbing 7 stories (104 stairs!), you will be gifted a tremendous view of Casco Bay and her islands. Trust us, the history tour is worth the admission price, but you can’t beat the view either! (Wanna learn at your own pace and get to the top quick? Visit during the times allotted for self-guided tours during weekends and select weekday evenings.)

The Portland Observatory is owned by the City of Portland and operated by Greater Portland Landmarks, a non-profit organization dedicated to the stories of the people and places that make Portland a home to visit, work, and live in. Scroll down to learn more about our work in The Column!

Questions During the Season?
📞 Call: 207-253-1800
📧 Email: portlandobservatory@gmail.com

Unseen Horizons:
Recovering the Lesser-Known Histories of Portland, Maine

Portland's skyline has been watched over by the Observatory on Munjoy Hill since 1807. From its tower, Captain Lemuel Moody tracked the comings and goings of a busy port city — the ships, the merchants, the tides. But the view from the hill captured only part of the story.

Unseen Horizons is a series of research projects that looks beyond the familiar narratives of Portland's past to recover the histories that have been overlooked, obscured, or left out of the official record. Each project takes the Portland Observatory and its maritime world as a starting point, then follows the threads that lead to the communities and lives that shaped this city in ways that history has not always acknowledged.

The people at the center of these projects are many: Black sailors, laborers, and families who built lives in a port city that was deeply entangled with the Atlantic slave economy; Indigenous peoples whose connections to Casco Bay and the surrounding lands predate the city itself; women who worked, organized, and endured at the water's edge and beyond; queer individuals who found community and survival in the social worlds of the port; immigrants who arrived by sea and stayed to build the working waterfront; laborers who powered the maritime economy with their bodies and fought for dignity within it; and the poor and working poor whose presence in Portland's history has often been noted only in moments of crisis or charity.

Together, these projects do not aim to replace Portland's existing history but to expand it — to ask who else was here, what else was happening, and what the city looks like when we widen the frame and let more voices into the record.

Unseen Horizons is a project of Greater Portland Landmarks. Funding generously provided by the Krug Educational Fund.