Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
Interesting facts
- The first Cape Hatteras lighthouse, funded by Congress in 1794 and finished in 1802, was built of dark sandstone left in its natural colour.
- In 1851 the naval officer David D. Porter called the old light the worst in the world, saying he had not seen it at all on his first nine passages.
- During the Civil War the lens and lantern of the old tower were destroyed, and the light later had to be re-established.
- The old tower was demolished in 1871, but its ruins survived on the beach until a storm finally washed them away in 1980.
- The present tower was struck by lightning in the spring of 1879, and cracks appeared in its masonry afterwards.
- By 1935 the surf had reached the tower, and for fifteen years the light shone instead from a steel skeleton tower set back on a dune.
- During the Second World War, as German U-boats attacked ships just offshore, the Coast Guard used the darkened brick tower as a lookout station.
- Sand later built up again in front of the tower, and the light returned to it in January 1950.
- Before the 1999 move the lighthouse stood just 15 feet from the water's edge, and fears that it would not survive the move led to lawsuits.
- The keepers' quarters and other buildings were moved along with the tower and set down with the same compass orientation and spacing as before.
Why it is worth it
Rising from the low dunes of Hatteras Island, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in the United States, at about 210 feet from base to tip, and the tallest built of brick, with some 1.25 million bricks in its walls. Its black-and-white double spiral is one of the most recognisable daymarks on the American coast, designed so that sailors could tell the tower apart from its neighbours in daylight. A climb of 257 steps leads to the lantern, whose beam can be seen about 20 nautical miles out to sea.
The light exists because of Diamond Shoals, shifting sandbars that reach far out from Cape Hatteras into the Atlantic. Here the warm Gulf Stream meets colder water from the north, storms build quickly, and so many ships were lost over the centuries that the waters became known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. The present tower was completed in 1870, designed by Dexter Stetson. The ocean, however, kept advancing on the island, and by the 1990s the surf was approaching the foot of the tower. In 1999, in an operation that won a national civil engineering award, the 5,000-ton lighthouse was lifted and rolled 2,900 feet southwest along a track, to a new site about 1,500 feet from the shore, where it stands today.
Hatteras Island is part of the Outer Banks, the thin chain of barrier islands that separates the Atlantic from Pamlico Sound, and most of it lies within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The lighthouse stands near the village of Buxton, close to the cape itself.
Getting there
The lighthouse is near Buxton on Hatteras Island, North Carolina, reached by NC Highway 12, the road that runs along the Outer Banks. The nearest city is Elizabeth City, about 133 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport by straight-line distance is Coastal Carolina Regional (EWN) at New Bern, about 139 km away across Pamlico Sound; Norfolk International (ORF) in Virginia, about 190 km to the north, connects with the island by road along the Outer Banks.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Cape Hatteras Light is a lighthouse located on Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks in the town of Buxton, North Carolina originally built in 1802 and relocated twice due to coastal erosion. It is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. It is the tallest lighthouse in the U.S. from base to tip at 210 feet. The lighthouse's semi-unique pattern makes it easy to recognize and famous. It is often ranked high on lists of most beautiful, and famous lighthouses in the US.
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