Light Hearted

The Elizabeth Islands are a chain of small islands that extend about 16 miles to the southwest from the southern coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. There are seven major islands in the chain. Naushon Island is the largest at 7.4 square miles. Tarpaulin Cove, on the east side of the island, was a place where seamen traveling through Vineyard Sound often stopped for a meal or a night’s stay at...

Cape Otway Lighthouse — in southern Victoria, Australia, about 50 miles southwest of Melbourne — is nicknamed the “Beacon of Hope.”  For thousands of immigrants in the 1800s, Cape Otway was the first sight of land after leaving Europe, Asia, and North America. It’s the oldest surviving lighthouse on the Australian mainland and it’s also considered the most significant. 19th c...

Funds were appropriated for a lighthouse at the entrance to Sandusky Bay on Lake Erie in 1819, and the limestone tower went into service in 1822. It was originally known as the Sandusky Light; the name Marblehead came into use later. The tower was raised 15 feet to its present height of 65 feet in 1898 and the light was automated in 1958. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources now owns the light...

Bessida Cauthorne White Stingray Point Lighthouse in Virginia, built in 1858, marked a dangerous shoal at the mouth of the Rappahannock River. In 1861, six enslaved men used the lighthouse – which was abandoned during the Civil War — as a safe house while waiting to catch a Union ship that would allow them to escape slavery. Bessida Cauthorne White is an activist, genealogist, and retired at...

Andy Robinson is a junior at Palo Alto High School in California, and he’s a co-chair for the Teen Advisory Council of the Palo Alto History Museum, where he helped create a historical time capsule of his city. Andy has also been a volunteer for the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s passport program, helping to update information on stamp locations and events. He’s written histories for a series of collec...

Point Sur juts out from a rugged portion of the California coast 25 miles south of Monterey Bay. The Lighthouse Board had considered a lighthouse at Point Sur as early as 1856, but the terrain was daunting. Point Sur, photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Congress finally appropriated $50,000 in 1886 and another $50,000 in the following year. Stone for the buildings was quarried near the site, and a...

Josh Liller Josh Liller has been the Historian and Collections Manager for the Loxahatchee River Historical Society and the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & Museum in Florida since 2014. Jupiter Inlet Light Station has a museum on the site that features 5000 years of local history. Josh also serves as historian for the Florida Lighthouse Association , and he gives presentations related to local hist...

Block Island, south of the Rhode Island coast and east of the entrance to Long Island Sound, lies in the middle of major shipping lanes.  A lighthouse was established at the island’s northernmost point in 1829, but it did nothing to aid vessels heading past the south side of the island. Congress appropriated $75,000 for a first-order light and fog signal in 1872, and a brick dwelling and atta...

Early photo of Bass River Lighthouse, Massachusetts (National Archives) Congress appropriated $4,000 for a lighthouse near the mouth of the Bass River on Cape Cod in 1850. Oxen hauled building materials across the local marshes, and the Bass River Light went into service on April 30, 1855. The government deemed the lighthouse unnecessary after the advent of the Cape Cod Canal and a new automatic l...

The Outer Banks, a 200-mile-long chain of barrier islands, stretch from southeastern Virginia to most of the North Carolina coast. The islands were a haven for piracy in the 1600s, but later an important commercial fishing industry developed in the region. Currituck Beach Lighthouse—the northernmost of the light stations on the Outer Banks—began service on December 1, 1875, to fill a 40-mile gap o...

Orient Point Lighthouse is a cast-iron, so-called “sparkplug” type lighthouse in a location known as Plum Gut, between Plum Island and Orient Point at the northeastern tip of Long Island, New York. After its 1958 automation, the Coast Guard considered tearing it down and replacing it with a simple pipe tower, but a public outcry saved the structure and some restoration work was carried out. ...

Elinor DeWire at Cape Meares Lighthouse, Oregon Elinor DeWire is an award-winning author, editor, public speaker, educator, and blogger based in Connecticut. She began her writing career with freelance stories for a Florida newspaper, and in 1987 she published her first book, Guide to Florida Lighthouses . Since then, she’s authored some twenty books about lighthouses. From 1991 to 2000 Elino...

Point Cabrillo is in Northern California, about midway between San Francisco and the border with Oregon. The point is named for Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, an explorer who sailed the California coast on behalf of Spain in 1542 and ‘43. It took a series of shipwrecks in the vicinity and pleas from mill owners and mariners before construction of a lighthouse began in the summer of 1908. An octagonal li...

Use this player to listen to the podcast: Chris Overcash Chris Overcash is the Senior Engineer and Deputy Director of Coastal Resilience for EA Engineering, Science, and Technology in Maryland. Chris has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of coastal, civil, and environmental engineering. His background includes projects in marine and coastal design, dredging, and resource management, a...

The lighthouse at Piney Point in Maryland –14 miles from Chesapeake Bay up the Potomac River — was established in 1836, making it the oldest lighthouse on the river. The conical brick tower is 26 feet tall. Piney Point Light Station, Maryland. U.S. Lighthouse Society photo by J. Candace Clifford. April Havens In 1980 the property was transferred to St. Mary’s County. The County license...

Listen to the podcast using this player: Ireland’s Hook Lighthouse is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the world. The tapering headland of Hook Head is in the southwestern part of County Wexford, on the southeast coast of Ireland below Dublin. In the fifth century, a monastery was established on the peninsula. According to tradition, the early monks from the monastery erected a beac...

Listen using this player: Eighteen-acre Rose Island , about a mile offshore from Newport, Rhode Island, has a commanding position in Narragansett Bay’s East Passage. The waters around Newport were busy with passenger steamers, fishing boats, and freighters in the mid-nineteenth century. On July 20, 1868, Congress appropriated $7,500 for a lighthouse on the island, and the site chosen was a s...

Boon Island is located in southern Maine, about six miles from the nearest point of land. The popular writer Celia Thaxter once called the small rocky island “the forlornest place that can be imagined.” It was the scene of many shipwrecks over the years, including the wreck of the British Nottingham Galley in December 1710, an incident that was later the basis of a novel by Kenneth Roberts. Undate...

Use this player to listen to the podcast: In the late 1860s, the hazard known as the Middle Ground Flats — opposite the City of Hudson, New York, in the Hudson River —made navigation in the busy shipping route treacherous. An appropriation of $35,000.00 was approved by Congress in 1872 to build the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse. The lighthouse went into service in late 1874. It was run by a resident ke...

Listen to the podcast with this player: The Bonavista Peninsula is on the east coast of Newfoundland, Canada, separating Trinity Bay to the south from Bonavista Bay to the north. At the peninsula’s northeastern tip is the headland known as Cape Bonavista. It’s believed that the navigator Giovanne Caboto, better known as John Cabot, may have landed at the cape during his first expedition to North A...

Listen to the podcast using this player: Wave-swept Bell Rock Lighthouse, about five miles from Arbroath in southeastern Scotland, was designed by the engineer Robert Stevenson of the famous Stevenson family of engineers. The granite tower, first lighted in 1811, was built so well that none of it has needed to be repaired or replaced in more than 200 years. It’s the oldest wave-swept, or sea-washe...

Listen with this player: Litløy fyr, on a small island off the northwest coast of Norway, was first lit in October 1912. For a time, it was the second most powerful lighthouse in Norway. The lighthouse was electrified in 1959 and then automated in 1991. Staff remained at the light station to maintain the property and to run a weather station. Eventually the staff was removed in 2003. Then, a coupl...

From the mid-eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, the waterways of coastal Georgia, from the St. Marys River in the south to the Savannah River in the north, were a vital part of the state’s economy. Georgia’s barrier islands are home to five existing lighthouses, each with its own unique style and history. William Rawlings Lighthouses of the Georgia Coast is the eleventh...

Listen to the podcast with this player: On one side of North Carolina’s Bald Head Island, the Cape Fear River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. On the other, treacherous sand bars known as the Frying Pan Shoals stretch to the south for about 30 miles into the ocean. The island’s first lighthouse was established in 1794. The original lighthouse was soon threatened by erosion, and it was...

Located at the eastern tip of Long Island, Montauk Point Light is the oldest lighthouse in New York and the fourth oldest active lighthouse in the country. Construction began in 1796 and was completed in the following year. When the light station was automated and de-staffed in 1987, a museum opened in the keeper’s house, operated by the Montauk Historical Society . Then, in 1996, ownership of the...