It's not the cheapest private island out there, but let's chalk that up to location: this one, billed as the "ultimate getaway" in the brokerbabble, is located just off the coast of Newport, that very famous, and very monied, Rhode Island yachting mecca. Newly listed for $179,000, the property was formerly home to the Gull Rocks Light, a wooden A-frame lighthouse built in 1887 at the base of the Newport Bridge. The structure caused quite the scandale in 1894, when the lighthouse keeper was assaulted by a local lobsterman (over the placement of lobster traps, as the story goes), yet it managed to survive a 1938 hurricane and was finally destroyed in 1961. What remains today is only the oil house, but, c'mon, "think about what creative things you might do with it subject to approvals." Even better, think about paying less than $200K to brush elbows with the owners of grand, gaudy Gilded Age mansions or the 1901 estate that Campbell Soup built.
· Buy the Country's Cheapest Private Island For $119,900 [Curbed National]
· Gull Rocks Light History [New England Lighthouses: a Virtual Guide]
· All Newport, R.I., coverage [Curbed National]
· 0 Gull Rocks, Newport, R.I. [Zillow
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