Stories of historic lighthouses

White Shoal   

White Shoal stood west of Newport News in the James River in Burwells Bay near the mouth of the Pagan River and suffered damage during the Civil War. By 1869 it was listing to one side and declared unsafe. Two years later, the lighthouse was rebuilt as a hexagonal cottage with a fog bell and a sixth order Fresnel lens.  The new little lighthouse served until 1934 when it an automated light replaced its beacon. The structure itself, however, outlasted all the other lighthouses on the James River, surviving until ice carried it away in the 1970s.

Point of Shoals

Point of Shoals Light House marked the edge of the last shoal in Burwells Bay, where the narrow channel took a sharp turn to the northeast across the James.  Confederates raided the lighthouse during the Civil War. Then, in 1871, after severe ice floe damage, the lighthouse was also rebuilt as a new hexagonal light that marked the shoal for 60 years. Automated in 1932 and deactivated a year later, the structure was dismantled in the 1960s.  

Deep Water Shoals

Deep Water Shoal Lighthouse, stood on the shoal on the starboard hand of the channel in the James River above Mulberry Island Point.  Confederates attacked the lighthouse in 1862 and the Light House Board removed the lens and stored it at Fort Monroe. Deep Water Shoals light station was the first on the James River to become an ice casualty when on January 20, 1867, ice floes completely destroyed the structure. The damage report following the destruction noted several problems. The station was located on the edge of the shoal, allowing ice flowing in the channel to build up against the pilings. The foundation structure formed a 20 foot square using just 5 - 5 inch diameter iron piles, screwed 10 feet into the bottom. The combination of a weak foundation design and risky location proved to be too much.[i]  

Until a replacement lighthouse could be built, a lightship moored in place of the station. An appropriation of $16,000 was approved   by Congress May 2, 1867. The new lighthouse was located away from the edge of the shoal on a river bottom better suited to hold the pilings. The new foundation, hexagonal in shape, had eight wood piles fitted with cast iron sleeves. The keeper’s station, mounted on top of the foundation, was also hexagonal in design. The new Deep Water Shoals Lighthouse opened on January 15, 1868 with a sixth order Fresnel lens. The light served until it was decommissioned in 1936 and dismantled 30 years later.

Craney Island Light 1859   

In 1820, the first permanent light ship marked Craney Island, located near the entrance to the Elizabeth River.  The lightship, a small wooden schooner, had a fixed white light up her mast.  In 1859, a square screwpile lighthouse replaced the lightship. Two years later, Confederate soldiers removed the lens and blew up the lighthouse. A temporary tower was built on the pilings until a hexagonal lighthouse, constructed at the Lazaretto Depot in Baltimore in 1863, replaced the tower. Yet another hexagonal structure replaced that in 1884 and served into the 1930s.[ii]

Nansemond River Light

The Nansemond River Light, built in 1878, was a hexagonal cottage-style screwpile lighthouse that came from the Lazaretto Lighthouse Depot in Baltimore. Parts of the old Roanoke Marshes Light foundation were recycled into the structure that was equipped with a sixth order Fresnel lens with a fixed red light and a range of six to seven miles.

The lighthouse stood near Pig Point on the east side of the entrance to the Nansemond River. The Civil War was over, the steamboat era was at its height and river traffic was heavy.  Schooners, farm boats and passenger steamboats filled the river. The oyster industry was at its peak as well and oyster rock lined the west side of the river channel with mud shoals lining the east side.

In 1876 a letter from the Office of Light-House Inspector had made the case for the lighthouse.  He explained that the “commerce of the Nansemond consisting of lumber, oysters, wood and vegetables commonly called truck is quite large and increasing…I am informed by reliable authority that some four hundred large schooners, some of them three masted with numerous smaller vessels, and several steamers are engaged in it…”   The lumber trade of Suffolk alone is of sufficient importance to require a railroad from that place to the sawmills near the Dismal Swamp.  The lumber is carried by schooners from Suffolk and other points on the river to New York and to other Southern states. …the best location for the light is on the shoal making out from Pig Point on the port hand entering the river in (8) eight feet of water, where the channel takes a turn.  Should the light be located there vessels can run for it, and rounding it close to avoid the more dangerous Oyster shoals on the starboard hand which frequently bring up vessels causing damage and delay.”[iii]

In 1935, when almost all manned lighthouses were automated and the screwpile lighthouses, dismantled, Colgate W. Darden, Jr., a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, asked the Lighthouse Board to retain the Nansemond River light. H.D. King, Acting Commissioner of Lighthouses, assured him that the beacon would remain. Later that same year, however, a steel skeletal tower with an automated light replaced the Nansemond River Lighthouse. 

Newport News Middle Ground

In the late 19th century, cast iron circular structures began to replace the ice-ravaged wooden screwpile lighthouses. Built in 1891, the Newport News Middle Ground Light, the oldest caisson structure in Virginia waters, helped guide mariners leaving the docks at Newport News. 

The fourth order Fresnel light height was 35’ and the foghorn was a striking bell.  Middle Ground Light, automated and refurbished in 1954, underwent conversion to solar power in 1987 with a less powerful channel marker light placed on a pole outside the lantern room. 

In 2000, after the Monitor-Merrimack Memorial Bridge Tunnel opened, the lighthouse lens was upgraded, a white light replaced with red in the caisson’s lantern room.  The caisson, now privately owned,  still serves as an aid to navigation, more visible than before to mariners near the bridge-tunnel.

York Spit Lighthouse – 1870

Lightships first marked the entrance to the York River beginning in 1855. Confederates destroyed the first lightship in 1861.  A second lightship was on station from 1863 to 1864.  In 1869/70 a screwpile lighthouse, equipped with fender piles to fend off ice and tidal erosion, first exhibited its light. In 1903, 2000 tons of riprap stone, placed around the pilings, stabilized the station. 

A 1933 storm damaged the lighthouse, but it stood working until an automated flashing beacon replaced the then dismantled structure in 1960. A flashing beacon on a single pile now marks York Spit.

Tue Marshes Light 1875 (Originally Too’s Marshes)

The Tue Marshes screwpile light, built on the Goodwin Islands, marked the entrance of the York River.  It was a square screwpile light and its original lens was a 6th order Fresnel fixed white with a red sector.  Its distinctive feature was the gingerbread detail on the eves of the roof.

Pages Rock Lighthouse - 1893

Pages Rock Lighthouse, located five miles north of Yorktown on the York River off Blundering Point, was a hexagonal cottage-style screwpile structure.  The lighthouse, assembled at the Lazaretto Depot in Maryland,  used a fourth order Fresnel lens.  After the lighthouse structure was removed, an automated steel skeletal tower replaced the lighthouse in 1967.

Bells Rock Light - 1881

The lighthouse intended for Bells Rock on the York River, two miles downstream from West Point, Virginia, was another hexagonal lighthouse assembled by the Lazaretto Lighthouse Depot in Maryland in 1880. However, when the Thimble Shoals lighthouse burned down, that newly built structure went to Thimble Shoals as a replacement.  The Depot constructed a second light for Bells Rock. The lighthouse displayed it light there first in 1881 but a schooner struck and damaged the structure three years later. In 1928, an automated light, placed on the original foundation, replaced the screwpile lighthouse. 

Wolf Trap 1821

Wolf Trap shoals was located in the Chesapeake Bay to the south of the entrance to the Rappahannock River, three miles offshore and at a point roughly midway between the Piankatank River and Mobjack Bay.  The shoal got its name after a British vessel, H.M.S. Wolfe, ran aground there 1691.  In 1821, a brand new 180-ton lightship, carrying two fixed lights visible for ten miles, anchored on the shoal.  The lightship, restored in 1852 but destroyed in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, gave way to a third lightship, placed on the station three years later. 

In 1870 the Lighthouse Board replaced the lightship with a hexagonal lighthouse structure that stood in 16 feet of water. In January 22, 1893, heavy ice floes sliced the lighthouse from its foundation.  A few days later, the lighthouse was found afloat several miles to the south near Thimble Shoals, with only its roof and lantern still peeking out above the water. The lantern room and lens from the lighthouse were salvaged but the structure, by then a navigational hazard, was towed to Portsmouth.

A lighted buoy shone on the shoal, temporarily.   In June, the lighthouse tender Holly, equipped with a light, anchored on the shoal for emergency duty until a lightship was reassigned to the station.  In 1893, funds were appropriated for a caisson style light to be built on Wolf Trap shoal.

Stingray Point  1858

Stingray Point is located at the entrance to the Rappahannock River near Deltaville, Virginia.

Captain John Smith named the point in July of 1607, after a stingray stung and severely wounded him, the story goes, while he was spearing fish with his sword. The point appears on the John Smith map published in 1612.   The hexagonal screwpile lighthouse built at Stingray Point in 1858 marked the point with a sixth order fixed red Fresnel lens. After suffering minor damage during the Civil War, the lighthouse extinguished its light until the end of the hostilities.   An automated electric lamp replaced the kerosene lamp and the structure was boarded up in 1950.  Fifteen years later, the Coast Guard replaced the, by then, shabby building with a pole light mounted on the screwpile foundation.  

About 30 years after the structure’s demise, two owners of the Stingray Harbor Marina built a carefully detailed and accurate replica of the lighthouse at the Marina in Deltaville.

Bowlers Rock Light 1868

Bowlers Rock Light was located on the Rappahannock River north of Urbanna.  Two lightships marked the location beginning in 1835.  After rebels destroyed the first lightship in 1861, a second lightship was on station in 1864.  The rectangular screwpile lighthouse built there in 1868 had two additional fender piles set one on each of the ebb and flow sides to protect against ice flows.  After ice still managed to damage the lighthouse in 1896, riprap stone, placed shortly afterward at the ebb and flow fender piles, served as additional icebreakers.

The relentless Ice finally destroyed the lighthouse in 1918. Three years later a caisson structure with an acetylene light and automatic fog bell operated by carbon dioxide gas replaced the screwpile lighthouse.

Windmill Point Light - 1869

Windmill Point marks the north side entrance to the Rappahannock River.  Three separate lightships had manned the point since 1834. In 1869, a permanent hexagonal screwpile structure, lit with a fifth order lens, replaced the lightships.  Riprap stones, added at the base of the pilings, helped ward off ice and harsh weather.  After the lighthouse was automated in 1954, a small automatic beacon replaced the cottage on the original foundation in 1965. 

Eastern Shore

Old Plantation Flats - 1886

Old Plantation Creek flows near the town of Cape Charles, Virginia.   In 1886, a newly constructed white rectangular cottage style lighthouse marked the entrance to the creek.  Ice floes damaged the lighthouses and destroyed the Fresnel lens in 1893.  When ice floes damaged the lighthouse again in 1918, the pilings were reinforced with concrete. 

An automated steel skeleton tower, 39 feet tall, built on the original lighthouse base, replaced the screwpile lighthouse in 1962. There is, however, a 2004 replica of the original lighthouse, within easy view of the original light’s foundation. The carefully researched and privately owned replica, equipped with a fourth-order Fresnel lens, stands on the Bay Creek Resort & Club property. 

Cherrystone Bar Light -1858

Built in 1858, the Cherrystone Bar light, a hexagonal screwpile lighthouse with a fourth order Fresnel lens marked the entrance to the channel of Cape Charles Harbor.  Confederate forces attacked the light during the Civil War and Union forces repaired it in 1862.  The October 1, 1919 Notice to Mariners announced the light would be discontinued and be replaced with a black skeleton tower on a black caisson in 1 fathom of water.[iv]

In October 1920, the hexagonal lighthouse became the only lighthouse to ever be moved to another site to serve as a working navigational aid when it was taken off its screwpile and moved by barge to the Choptank River in Maryland.

Killock Shoal Light - 1886

Killock Shoal borders the Chincoteague Channel on the northern end of Virginia’s Eastern Shore.  The lighthouse that opened there in 1886 had an unusual 1 ½ story square frame screwpile design. An automated light on a steel tower on the original foundation replaced the screwpile lighthouse in 1939.  

North Carolina Screwpile Lights

The North Carolina screwpile lights helped safeguard and enhance the brisk trade of goods between North Carolina and Virginia.

North River Light 1866

From 1866, the North River Lighthouse, also known as the North River Bar Lighthouse, stood on a bar at the entrance to the North River of Albemarle Sound near Old Trap, North Carolina.  In 1917, however, ice floes crushed its foundation and the lighthouse was deactivated. In 1929 the Coast Guard sold the structure to the superintendent of the Dare County Schools who modified and used the building as a school in the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo community.  By 1951 the remodeled building had found new life as the Chicamancomico Community center.[v]

Wade Point Lighthouse

From 1826 to 1855, a lightship marked this site until the Wade Point Lighthouse was built at Wade Point Shoal, Albemarle Sound, at the entrance to the Pasquotank River.  The first lighthouse structure, heavily damaged in the Civil War, was restored in 1886 and stood until 1899 when a similar structure built right next to the old lighthouse replaced it.  A December 31, 1917, ice storm snapped the lighthouse’s iron pilings but when the ice melted, the lighthouse still stood, doing a sort of balancing act on the bent, snapped, and cracked base of the pilings.  The pilings, welded back together, supported the lighthouse as it continued to serve until it was decommissioned in the early 1950s.

In 1955 the government sold Wade Point Lighthouse to Elijah Tate, a salvager who attempted to move the lighthouse to shore.  However, during the process, the lighthouse slipped off its perch as it was being transferred onto a barge, fell apart and sank.  Locals recalled finding pieces of the old light washed up on shore.

Roanoke Marshes Light 1831

The first Roanoke Marshes lighthouse, built in 1831, stood on land near the southern entrance to Croatan Sound between Wanchese and the mainland until 1839 when it was abandoned.  In 1858, a wooden, cottage-style, screwpile lighthouse was built in the narrow channel connecting Pamlico and Croatan Sounds. In 1877, a smaller square screwpile lighthouse structure replaced  the old screwpile at a site approximately 100 yards south-southwest.      

Veteran lighthouse keeper Unaka Benjamin Jennette, noted for his years of service at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, served the last four years of his lighthouse service at Roanoke Marshes – retiring in 1943.  By the 1950s, the lighthouse was obsolete. Elijah Tate bought the structure as salvage and planned to move it ashore.  In 1955, as Tate floated the lighthouse on a barge,  rough seas came up and the structure slipped off the barge and sank.  In September of 2004, the Town of Manteo, North Carolina, dedicated a replica of the lighthouse the town’s waterfront. 

Roanoke River Light 1867

Roanoke River lighthouse one stood in the Albemarle Sound at the mouth of the Roanoke River.  In 1835 a lightship designated “MM” was stationed at that location.  Interestingly, the ship shows red, blue, and green lenses.  Early in the Civil War, Confederate forces captured the “MM”, took it up the Roanoke River and scuttled it.

A square screwpile lighthouse, erected in 1866 as one of five screwpiles built in North Carolina at that time, lasted until March 1885 when it burned. Since a navigational light was considered  critical at that site,  a screwpile cottage already built for as the Croatan Lighthouse was redirected to the Roanoke River and first shone its fourth-order light five months after the fire.

The next year, however, moving ice floes snapped two of the pilings and the new cottage dropped into the water. 

Two years later, yet another new screwpile lighthouse rose at the same site, this with an unusual, two-story design and a lantern tower at the corner, rather than the center, of the roof. 

The lighthouse served until its deactivation in 1941. Later moved to Edenton, North Carolina, the lighthouse became a private home. In May, 2007, the Town of Edenton bought the then dilapidated structure and began a year’s long project to restore the lighthouse as the centerpiece of the town’s waterfront where it stands now. 

Laurel Point Lighthouse 1880  

Laurel Point Lighthouse, built in Albemarle Sound in 1880, was lighted with a fourth order Fresnel lens that gave off a white flash every 30 seconds. Veteran lighthouse keeper Benjamin Cox was the keeper here for an amazing 26 years.  Interestingly, this small station was important enough to have an assistant keeper as well.  In addition to being a lighthouse keeper, Benjamin Cox also owned a general store and a house on the mainland where he spent much of his time.  However, one winter when the food supply ran dangerously low at the lighthouse, he walked across the frozen sound, in a blinding blizzard from the lighthouse to the mainland.  The walk took him one full day, one full night and a part of the next day.  He retired in 1926 after 35 years of lighthouse service.  In the 1950s the lighthouse was discontinued and demolished.  Surprisingly, for a lighthouse that stood until the 1950s, very few photographs of the lighthouse seem to exist.[vi]

Hooper Strait Lighthouse, St. Michael’s Maryland

Hooper Strait Light, built in 1867 to replace a lightship stationed at Hooper Strait in Dorchester County, Maryland, lasted only a decade before ice tore the screwpile’s cottage from its foundation and sent it floating down the Bay.  Using the lens, lamp and fog bell salvaged from the runaway lighthouse and a hexagonal screwpile lighthouse refabricated at the Lazarretto Point Depot, the new Hooper Strait light opened in 1882. The light remained manned until 1954 when it was automated and the house, boarded up. 

In the 1960s, as the Coast Guard was replacing former screwpile cottages with skeleton tower lights, the newly formed Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum worked with the Historical Society of Talbot County and the federal government to move the lighthouse to the museum’s campus where it stands today, a proudly restored vestige of a former era.

• [i] NA RG 26 E  38. Letter Book  274. P.522 

• [ii] Craney Island Lighthouse. U.S.Lighthouse Society. www.uslhs.org 

• [iii] NA. RG-26. Letters Received From District Engineers and Inspectors Feb. 1855-Dec. 1900. Office of Light-House Inspector, Fifth District. September 6, 1876. Pp. 118-122.

• [iv] Notice to Mariners 38 (1203). Bureau of Lighthouses. Washington, 1919. U.S. Coast Survey Charts 78, 1222. Light List, Atlantic and Gulf Coast.

• [v] Lighthouse Digest. (March 2007). Long Lost Beacon Still Stands.

• [vi] Lighthouse Digest. (Mar/April 2014). Laurel Point Lighthouse.