The countdown for the June, 2017 opening of Into the Lantern: A Lighthouse Experience is on. Members of the Maine Maritime Museum and the Cape Elizabeth town council battled through the snow and broke ground for the latest exhibit at Bath’s Maine Maritime Museum on Monday, marking the beginning of construction. The exhibit will feature an original Fresnal lens that was housed in east Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse Tower — formally known as Two Lights — for more than 100 years.

The exhibit will be the first of its kind to include a 180-degree media projection system with time-lapse videography of the Gulf of Maine, simulating the experience of standing in the tower.

The exhibit is three years in the making, and it’s the first big addition to the building since the 1980s.

“One of our trustees said three years ago, ‘if you’re going to do this, think big,’” said Amy Lent, executive director of Maine Maritime Museum. “To pull something like this off and raise $1 million in three years is big in of itself.”

The lens that the museum recently acquired through a partnership with the Cape Elizabeth Town Council is 60 meters in diameter.

“It’s a huge object, and just putting it on a pedestal didn’t seem like quite enough,” said Lent. “We thought about creating a replica lighthouse and facing it toward the Kennebec River, but that felt wrong, too.”

Additionally, the Coast Guard advises against exposing the lens to broad daylight, so the idea of a darkened room with a panorama inside fit the bill.

“It will be just like if you were in the top of a lighthouse,” said Lent.

“People like to get away from reading stuff on a wall and actually be in those spaces,” said museum curator Chris Hall. “After being up in Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse three years ago I realized that this is a pretty amazing place that people don’t get to experience, and I was hoping we could recreate that as much as possible. The different pieces sort of came together, especially once we had the lens.”

Sections of the lens were used in the original lighthouse that was built in 1874, but the lens didn’t take its true form until the lighthouse switched from oil lamps to electricity in 1928. The lens was retired a few years ago, and found a home at the Cape Elizabeth town hall, where passersby could see and touch it. But the Coast Guard deemed the lens unfit to touch without gloves, so it was put into storage until Maine Maritime Museum and the Cape Elizabeth Town Council secured it for the exhibit.

“The vote for our council to be involved was unanimous,” said Patty Grennon of Cape Elizabeth Town Council.

Lent said that Maine Maritime Museum has been broadening its scope south to the Portland area since 2010, when they acquired the collections of Portland Harbor Museum.

“The commitment at that time was to talk about Portland and its environs as a much bigger part of our story here at this museum,” said Lent. “This lighthouse was right in line with our commitment.”

Lent said one of the biggest draws for the upcoming exhibit is the fact that most lighthouses in Maine are not accessible.

“If you’re too young, too old, had surgery and can’t handle the steps you’re never going to get up and see a real lighthouse,” said Lent. “Now you can have a little taste of what that is like.”

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