Historical Materials: Cape Ann Locales

Eastern Point is the long promontory that defines the eastern limit of Gloucester Harbor. In Lane's day it was wild and uninhabited but was also a strategic landmark. A Civil War fort was built there in 1863. Lane painted his seminal series of Brace's Cove and Brace's Rock from a vantage point on the eastern side.

The area was made safer for navigation by the construction of a new lighthouse in 1831 and the breakwater known as the Dog Bar. First proposed in 1866 in order to reduce turbulence in the waters of the outer harbor during heavy weather, it was not until 1894 that work on its construction began. Progress was slow, and although an extraordinary number of shipwrecks and groundings in 1898 sped it up somewhat, the breakwater was not completed until 1905.