Egg Rock is a three-acre rock off the coast of Lynn and Nahant.

It rises 80 feet above sea level. Alonzo Lewis described it as a couchant (sleeping) lion, protecting Lynn from approach. After an 1843 schooner wreck, Lewis asked Congress for a lighthouse. The first lighthouse was built by contractor Ira P. Brown on the island at a cost of $3,700 in 1856.

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The lighthouse's lens produced a fixed white light, first exhibited on September 15, 1856. It was changed to red a year later in reaction to the wreck of the schooner Shark. The captain had mistaken Egg Rock Light for Long Island Head Light in Boston Harbor.

George L. Lyon of Lynn became the lighthouse keeper in 1889. Lyon's crowning achievement at Egg Rock was the invention of a landing stage on the island.

In 1922, the light was discontinued. The government sold the buildings at auction for $160, while the buyer had to remove the buildings from the island at his own expense. The state of Massachusetts took over Egg Rock in 1927 and maintains it as a bird sanctuary.