Originally located on an artificial island 1/4 miles (~ 400 meters) from shore, the lighthouse is now surrounded by a beach formed, since 1939, by sand accumulating around the stone causeway connecting it to the mainland.

The original Edgartown Light was a wooden, Cape Cod Style, two-story Keeper's house built on wood spiles a short distance offshore in shallow water.

In 1939, the United States Coast Guard demolished the existing buildings and installed an 1881 vintage cast-iron tower relocated from Ipswich Rear Range Light.

The three threatened lights on Martha's Vineyard were saved through federal petition and Congressional testimony by Vineyard Environmental Research, Institute's (VERI) founding board member and President, William Waterway Marks, and, Chair, John F. Bitzer, Jr.[9] VERI was a nonprofit organization co-founded in 1984 by William Waterway Marks and Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr., to undertake cutting-edge environmental research of acid rain; sea-level rise; shellfish resources; coastal erosion; Great Pond, wetland, and barrier beach ecosystem dynamics, and aquifer (groundwater) protection.

During and after the Congressional hearings, VERI's effort to save the island's three iconic lighthouses received support from Congressman Gerry Studds, and Senator Ted Kennedy.

During its first year, the Cape Cod Style two-story Keeper's house with its lighthouse lantern room was accessible only by rowing a boat from nearby waterfront land.

A large volume of the destabilized Eel Pond barrier beach sand was carried southeasterly by prevailing littoral drift toward the Edgartown Light area.

As depicted in the photograph to right, the first Edgartown lighthouse (constructed 1828) featured a glass lantern room protruding from the middle of the gabled roof of the Keeper's residence.

VERI board member, Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr., who owned a home abutting Lighthouse Pond, was instrumental in organizing donations from his fellow neighbors.

Necessary engineering; permit applications; public hearings; material acquisition, and reconstruction oversight was performed at no cost to VERI or the community by Vineyard Environmental Protection, Inc.(VEP).

[9] Public access to the light room and balcony, however, were severely limited because of the physical challenges of climbing the near-vertical wrought iron ladder inside the tower that provided the only means of reaching them.

[13] Between 2005 and 2007 the Museum, with the help of a $250,000 contribution from the Town of Edgartown, rebuilt the stone foundation of the lighthouse as a children's memorial and installed a spiral staircase to provide access to the light room and balcony.

[14] In May 2011, the Edgartown Harbor Light was declared by the United States Coast Guard (USCG) to be no longer critical to its mission of safeguarding lives and property at sea.

The Town of Edgartown began the process of acquiring it under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, presenting its bid to the federal government's General Services Administration in January 2013.

[15] The transfer process was completed a year later, and in January 2014, the town officially took possession of the lighthouse, paying the government the symbolic sum of one dollar.

The Martha's Vineyard Museum has continued to act as steward of the lighthouse, as it does for the East Chop Light, and to provide public access during the summer months.