Approximately 10 minutes from the Town of Yarmouth, the Cape Forchu Lightstation is home to the first “applecore” style lighthouse with its 75 feet of statuesque beauty. This towering beacon sits atop picturesque volcanic rocks and has guided vessels safely into the Yarmouth Harbour since 1840. Today, it’s a great place to have a picnic on the 19 acres of well-groomed grounds, shop in the gift shop, visit the museum and walk the shorelines enjoying the views and crisp salty air of the Yarmouth Harbour. You can even take a tour and climb the 77 steps in the tower! The leisurely country drive to the Cape Forchu Lightstation takes you through magnificent ocean side scenery and coastal communities to experience a part of Nova Scotia that is seacoast, fog, beaches, fishing vessels, working fishing villages and shanties, unpredictable water and tides and breathtaking sunsets. In 1604, Samuel de Champlain discovered this forked tongue of land that he named, Cap Forchu, meaning forked cape. Now it is your turn to come discover what the excitement is all about!

The current Prim Point Lighthouse is the fourth in a succession of lights built on this location that date back to 1804. The 1804 light lasted just four years before burning in 1808, and it wasn’t until 1817 that its replacement was built. The second Prim Point Lighthouse was a square dwelling, painted white with red vertical stripes on its northern and two adjoining sides. The third Prim Point Lighthouse, built in 1874, was a square wooden tower with sloping sides built into the northern end of one-and-a-half-story dwelling with a gabled roof. Red vertical stripes adorned the tower to continue the station’s daymark. The fourth lighthouse on Prim Point was built in the familiar form of a square tower rising from one corner of a one-story, flat-roofed building.