North Carolina Lighthouses

With the principal passages of the time marked, federal officials next turned their attention to the state's treacherous capes and shoals. Cape Hatteras was their top priority, but delays and setbacks thwarted the early stages of the project, with workers battling malaria, soft sand and funding shortfalls. It would be more than eight years until the Hatteras light was completed in 1803. Three years later, construction of a fourth lighthouse, this one marking Cape Lookout, was added to the list.

But the early lighthouses were beset by problems. Their beacons were too weak to cut through the dense coastal fog, and their locations, especially Bald Head Lighthouse, were deemed too far away from shipping lanes to be effective. In 1814, less than twenty years after it was completed, the first Bald Head light was obsolete. Its replacement, a sturdy brick octagon covered by whitewashed cement, was completed in 1818. The second light assumed the duties as well as the name of its predecessor. Today, the 1818 structure, the oldest North Carolina lighthouse still standing, is affectionately known as ''Old Baldy.''

At about the same time, it was becoming obvious that the other first-generation lighthouses were also in need of repair or replacement. Shell Castle light stood for twenty years before it was destroyed by lightning in 1818. By then, with the inlet's deepest channels slowly moving away from Shell Castle Island, officials elected not to rebuild the light, but instead to place a lightship in the inlet. A series of storms that wracked Ocracoke and damaged the lightship forced planners to reconsider, and they soon turned their attention to the one-acre tract in Ocracoke Village state officials had secured years before. In 1822, a contract was awarded for construction of the Ocracoke light. Completed the following year, the whitewashed tower is the oldest operating lighthouse in the state.

With second-generation lighthouses in place at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and Ocracoke Inlet, and the lights at Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout in place, the major ports and promontories of the Carolina coast were marked. Planners next turned their attention to the sounds and outlying shoals of the Tar Heel coast. For the next three decades, nearly two dozen smaller lights were placed throughout North Carolina waters.

One of those lights was Price's Creek Lighthouse, located on the west bank of the Cape Fear above Southport, and along the twenty-five mile stretch of river from Wilmington to the sea. The twenty-foot Price's Creek tower, completed in 1848, is the surviving member of a pair of lighthouses, and one of the few remaining traces of a series of lights once marking the river. Paired lights were common, acting as range finders for captains navigating narrow channels.

Another lighthouse built during this period was placed along a remote section of coast on what is now Hatteras Island. In 1837, a Navy survey report recommended the placement of a coastal light to help fill the gap in navigational aids that existed between Cape Hatteras and Cape Henry, Virginia, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It took ten years to initiate the project, but in 1847 work began on the first of three lighthouses in the vicinity of Bodie Island.

Construction on the Bodie Island light was completed the following year, but it was clear from the start that the lighthouse left much to be desired. Built without an adequate foundation and more than a foot out of plumb, the tower had a noticeable list. Furthermore, the leaning tower affected the mechanical winch system that turned the beacon, often leaving it stuck in a single position.

Revelations of the shoddy construction on the light couldn't have come at a worse time. Lighthouse planning officials were coming under increased scrutiny from congressional critics, and the Bodie Island project did little to help their cause. In 1852, following a scathing review, a new agency, the Light House Board, was created. Its mission was to revamp the earlier system, creating first-rate navigational aids that would rival any in the world.