Westport Maritime Museum

This former Coast Guard station was built in 1939 and boasts some great period photos and artifacts of seafaring days gone by. A separate building houses the 6-ton, 18ft-high Fresnel lens, manufactured in France in 1888, that beamed for over 70 years from the lighthouse of Destruction Island, 50 miles north of Westport. Equally impressive is the glassed-in hall of whale skeletons, each with its own gripping story.