North Carolina Lighthouses

Faced with a hodge-podge of largely inferior lights along the Carolina coast, the newly constructed board implemented sweeping changes. In 1854, they boosted the height of the Cape Hatteras light from ninety to one hundred and fifty feet. They placed smaller lights along the Bogue Banks, near Cape Fear, and near Roanoke Island, and replaced the ailing Bodie Island light with a new, ninety-foot tower in 1858.

The same year, they turned their attention to the aging, fifty-year-old Cape Lookout Lighthouse. Armed with the technology of the day and an edict that stressed quality over economy, the board commissioned construction of a tower design that would become the model for subsequent Tar Heel lights. Strong and graceful, the one hundred and sixty foot Cape Lookout light, the first in a series of four nearly identical lighthouses placed along the Outer Banks, was completed in 1859.

As the country moved toward the Civil War, navigational aids along the Carolina coast were the best they'd ever been. But the ravages of war took a a heavy toll on the state's system of lights. By the end of the conflict, virtually every lighthouse along the coast had been damaged or destroyed.

The 1858 Bodie Island light had been blown up during the war and one of the Light House Board's first tasks was to replace navigational aids along the one hundred and twenty mile stretch from Cape Hatteras to Cape Henry. The board decided to place three new lighthouses -- at Cape Hatteras, Bodie Island, and Currituck Beach -- each forty miles apart. The placement of the lights would enable passing ships to spot one light ahead before the last one fell away off the stern.

In 1867, after more than six decades of wind, weather and war, the 1803 Hatteras light needed to be replaced. Congress approved funding for the new lighthouse, and work began on a new tower based on the 1859 Cape Lookout design. Completed in 1870, the one hundred and ninety-eight foot Cape Hatteras Lighthouse -- the country's tallest brick lighthouse, was the masterpiece of Outer Banks lighthouse construction.

Following the completion of the Hatteras light, construction began almost at once on the Bodie Island light -- the third to mark the same section of the coast in twenty-four years. Situated on the north side of Oregon Inlet, the one hundred fifty-six foot Bodie Island Lighthouse was completed in 1872.

Three years later, with the completion of the one hundred fifty-eight foot Currituck Beach light, the Light House Board had coordinated the construction of three first-rate lighthouses along the Outer Banks in five years.

Once the 1870s-era lights were completed, the board implemented a standardized marking system for each. Because each of the lights was based on the 1859 Cape Lookout design, they were difficult to distinguish in silhouette. In 1873, each light was painted with the distinctive markings it still bears. Cape Lookout received a checkered pattern, Cape Hatteras was given its distinctive stripes, and Bodie Island its broad bands. Currituck Beach was left unpainted, its red brick exterior making it as distinctive as its cousins to the south.

The four Outer Banks giants still stand as a tribute to nineteenth century lighthouse technology. They are joined by the older and more diminutive lights at Ocracoke, Bald Head and Price's Creek. Although the towering brick lights are unmatched in their elegant beauty, a new generation of lighthouse has begun to mark the state's coastline. The Oak Island Lighthouse, a stark cylinder rising one hundred and sixty-nine feet above the mouth of the Cape Fear, boasts one of the brightest beacons in the world. Completed in 1958, it was the first lighthouse built along the Carolina coast in more than half a century.

Across the river from the Oak Island light sits the stout, octagonal tower of Old Baldy -- the light it replaced forty years ago. And so it goes. New replaces old. Time, technology, and the relentless nature of the North Carolina coast continue to influence the course of events. The legacy of the Tar Heel lights, a history spanning more than two centuries, continues to turn, like the rotating beacons of the towering lights flashing across the dark ocean sky.