STATE TO PRESERVE HISTORIC LIGHTHOUSE FAMILY SAVES PARADISE BY SELLING IT.(Local)

Byline: Paul Grondahl

Virginia Woolf may have written "To the Lighthouse," but the Raboff family lived it on Valcour Island near Plattsburgh.

Each summer for nearly 30 years, Adolph and Kathlyn

Raboff and their four children closed up their New Rochelle, Westchester County, home and moved to a rustic cedar cabin and their 112-year-old Valcour Lighthouse on the island of the same name.

Recently, the state Department of Environmental Conservation purchased for $40,000 the Raboff's lighthouse, which has been deemed eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, and its adjacent 1.5-acre parcel.

With the lighthouse purchase, after 23 years of small and sporadic land acquisitions by EnCon, the entire 1,000- acre island is now under state ownership and …