In the Spotlight: Lighthouses of the OBX

April 2011

We love to visit lighthouses. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, we seek out these beacons that are designed to guide seafarers safely through treacherous waters. We may not always climb to the top, but we certainly always enjoy them from the ground.

During this trip, we had the opportunity to see not one, but four lighthouses. Actually, we saw five, but I posted about the one in Manteo in a separate post already. (See the map to the right for the locations of the four lighthouses of the OBX.)

I could use my own words to summarize the information I gleaned from guidebooks and pamphlets we picked up during our week-long stay in the OBX. But why? The Insiders’ Guide: North Carolina’s Outer Banks has already done the job for me, so I’ll quote from the guide instead. (Let’s face it, I can use all the help I can get. I’m way behind on these posts and I need to get them done before our upcoming non-motorhome vacation in July.)

More than a dozen ships a day carried cargo and crew along Outer Banks waterways by the dawn of the 19th century. Schooners, sloops, sailboats, and new steamers all journeyed around the sounds and across the oceans, often dangerously close to the coast, in search of the ever-shifting and shoaling inlets.

At that time waterways were the country’s primary highways, and North Carolina’s barrier islands were part of most eastern routes.

The lighthouse at Cape Hatteras was one of the first OBX Beacons to be authorized.
today’s lighthouse is the third one to be illuminated on the original site;
more than 1,000,000 bricks were used in its construction.

Hurricanes and nor’easters took many boats by surprise, ending their voyages and hundreds of lives. Alexander Hamilton dubbed the ocean off the barrier islands “the Graveyard of the Atlantic” because its shoals became the burying grounds for so many ships. In an attempt to help seamen navigate the treacherous shoals, the federal government authorized the Banks’ first lighthouses in 1794: one at Cape Hatteras in the fishing village of Buxton and the other in Ocracoke’s harbor, on a half-mile-long, 60-mile wide pile of oyster shells dubbed Shell Castle Island. Shell Castle Lighthouse first illuminated the Atlantic in 1798. The Cape Hatteras beacon was finally erected in 1802. Two subsequent structures have sat on the same Buxton spot, but the Shell Castle beacon has long since succumbed to the sea.

The historic double keeper's quarters (assistant keepers' house; on the left) and the
principal keeper's house (on the right) were moved when the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
was moved inland to its present-day location.

Ship captains complained that the early lighthouses were unreliable and too dim. Vessels continued to smash into the shoals. So in 1823 the federal government financed a 65-foot-high lighthouse on Ocracoke Island. Whitewashed with a glass tower set slightly askew on its top, it is the oldest (**) lighthouse still standing in North Carolina.

[** Signage at the lighthouse identified it as the second oldest in the state.]

Ocracoke lighthouse survived the Civil War with minimal damage. Confederate troops dismantled
the fourth-order Fresnel lens early on, but in 1864 Union forces re-installed it.
According to the recently uncovered original directive, the lighthouse was to have been painted
in alternating bands of red and white. The keeper's house is now a private residence

Officials raised the Cape Hatteras tower to 150 feet in 1854. Five years later two new Outer Banks beacons were built, at Cape Lookout and on Bodie Island, both of which were improved and rebuilt in later years.

On December 16, 1870 the third lighthouse at Cape Hatteras was illuminated. Standing 208 feet tall and using a multifaceted lens to refract its beam across miles of sea, this spiral striped structure is the tallest brick lighthouse in the world.

Pronounced “body,” bodie island lighthouse is closed for restoration.
Unfortunately all work has come to a screeching halt, we were told, due to lack of funds.
Whether funding will be provided in the 2012 fiscal year budget for the National Park Service is TBD.

the Lighthouse is more than ½-mile from the sea; it sits in the middle of a marsh teeming with birdlife.

Currituck Beach’s red brick beacon was the last major lighthouse to be built on the barrier island beaches. The 150-foot tower was completed in 1875. It watches over the Whalehead Club, near the western shores of Corolla. It is the only unpainted lighthouse on the Outer Banks.

Currituck Beach Lighthouse is the northernmost beacon on the OBX.

Glimpse of the lighthouse from the Whalehead Club (on the grounds of Currituck Heritage Park).

You might have noticed that each of the lighthouses featured here have a different paint scheme. This was done to help seafarers identify the beacons as they sailed along the coast. Another means for identifying the lighthouses was the cycle of the light — some were steady, others blinked on and off at different, pre-specified intervals.

Our intent on this trip was to climb the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Bad planning on our part. We should have climbed Currituck when we had the chance; it was the first one we visited and there was no waiting to climb the 214 steps to the top. It turns out that Ocracoke was not open for climbing; the lines at Cape Hatteras were way too long (busloads of school kids on spring break); and of course, Bodie was closed for renovations. Oh well; we’ll have other opportunities to get up close and personal with the guiding lights that shine out into the inky darkness of night.

Before I end this post … an interesting aspect of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse (aka America’s Lighthouse) is that it no longer stands where it was built. In 1999, to save the lighthouse from the encroaching sea, the beacon was moved 1,600 feet (488 m) inland to a position that puts it at the same distance it was to the sea when it was built in 1870. While at the lighthouse, we watched an interesting video documenting the move. What an achievement. A job well done.

The old sea wall near the original site of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.

The original location, now 120 feet (37 m) from the water, is marked by a ring of granite foundation
blocks. the names of the 83 keepers who served at the lighthouse are engraved on the blocks.

From here to there … and a B&W look at today's lighthouse from where it once stood on the beach
(the historic photo inset was downloaded from the NPS website).

For more photographs of the lighthouses of the OBX, visit my online gallery here.