With erosion threatening its future, a lighthouse known as the Highland Light began its journey Thursday from atop a cliff where it has stood for nearly 140 years, a beacon protecting sailors from the treacherous shoals off Cape Cod.

Henry David Thoreau wrote that a man could stand at the lighthouse "and put all America behind him."The white brick lighthouse that has become a symbol of Cape Cod in photographs, in literature and on Massachusetts license plates is moving inland to avoid toppling into the Atlantic Ocean.

Dozens of people watched at 9:30 a.m. as the 66-foot tower, its stately form corseted by steel cables, was rolled the first few feet of its 450-foot journey from the eroding bluffs on which it sits to a safer home on a golf course.

"It's a great thing. It certainly is. All the time and effort is paying off," said Gordon Russell, chairman of the town's Committee to Save the Cape Cod Light.

"The move was almost imperceptible. You had to line up with something on the side and see the space getting bigger," said Milton Wright, who like most onlookers was kept a couple of hundred feet away. "You stand there for about 20 minutes and it moves a few inches."

When the lighthouse first was built in 1797, it stood 510 feet from the edge of the bluffs, which soar 120 feet above the beach. The current 650-ton structure was built in 1857 on the same spot. But by today, the site is only about 100 feet from the eroding cliff's edge.

The lighthouse is no longer necessary to guide boats, but the beacon that once burned whale oil has become a beloved landmark on what is now the Cape Cod National Seashore.

After big chunks of the cliff eroded during a blizzard in 1978 and spring storms in 1987, the Truro Historical Society began negotiating with the Coast Guard and the National Seashore for help saving it.

The historical society began to sell T-shirts, posters and pins to gawkers, raising nearly $200,000 to move the lighthouse. The state agreed to contribute $500,000 and federal authorities kicked in $950,000.

After a contractor was hired this spring, the lighthouse was braced and the area beneath it excavated. The old floor and foundation were knocked out and the lighthouse and brick connecting building were separated from the wooden keeper's house, which will be moved separately.

For the next week or two, 30-ton hydraulic rams will push it to the new site along seven steel rails, 5 feet at a time.

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"Tomorrow it should go booking down the road, if you can call moving 20 feet an hour booking down the road," Merl Copeland, superintendent for contractor International Chimney Corp., said Wednesday.

When the move is complete, the Highland Light will sit 570 feet from the cliff's edge and 7 feet from the seventh fairway at the Highlands Golf Links.

The nine-hole golf course, played by about 40,000 golfers a year, was built in 1892.

Once the move is finished, the lighthouse will be open to tourists, with a National Park Service guide present daily from April to October.

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