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Bodie Island Lighthouse North Carolina Lighthouses Restoration

Reportedly, Bodie Island, originally “Body,” is named after the family who owned the land, but folklore would have it that the name resulted from the many shipwrecked bodies that washed ashore. Rising 165 feet and painted with striking black and white stripes, the picture-perfect Bodie Island Lighthouse is actually the third attempt to illuminate the perilous stretch of coast between Cape Hatteras and Currituck Beach.

Because of the mounting number of shipwrecks off this section of North Carolina’s outer banks, in 1837 the federal government sent the impressively named Lieutenant Napoleon L. Coste to determine the best location for another lighthouse. He suggested that a light 35 miles north of Cape Hatteras, on or near Bodie Island, would allow south-bound ships to fix their positions for navigating the menacing Cape.

Although Congress immediately agreed, the construction of the original lighthouse was fraught with problems, beginning with a ten-year delay because of difficulties in acquiring the land. Once the purchase finally went through, the man who approved all lighthouse expenditures (The Fifth Auditor of the Treasury), was far more interested in saving money than in building a lighthouse. Although normally we would applaud efforts to curtail government spending, in this case it was disastrous. As if having Scrooge holding the purse strings wasn’t bad enough, the overseer of the construction was a retired Customs official who knew nothing about lighthouses and ignored the engineer’s recommendations. The result was a monument to inefficiency. The 54-foot tower housed not a Fresnel lens, but an inferior reflector lighting system that frequently didn’t work. The unsupported brick foundation quickly developed cracks and leaks and began to sink on one side. Within a couple of years the lighthouse resembled the leaning Tower of Pisa, without the cultural cachet, and had to be abandoned. A mere eleven years after it was constructed, the now derelict lighthouse was razed.

The second lighthouse, although better built, fared even worse. Completed in 1859, the new Bodie Island Lighthouse was designed by the trusty Army Corps of Engineers, and boasted a graceful 80-foot tower of whitewashed brick and an iron lantern room. The third-order Fresnel lens was visible fifteen miles out to sea, but almost immediately the Civil War brought an end to its usefulness. Retreating Confederate soldiers, trying to foil the Union Navy any way they could, blew up the lighthouse in 1861. Bodie’s Fresnel lens was later discovered by Union troops in the rotunda of the North Carolina Capitol building, where “a vast pile of lighthouse apparatus: costly lamps and reflectors of Fresnel and Argand” had been cached by the Confederates.

Perhaps dispirited about their first two doomed attempts at Bodie Island, the Lighthouse Board dragged their feet commissioning another lighthouse. It took several years of vehement petitions from understandably concerned sea captains for construction to begin on a third lighthouse. In 1871 the Lighthouse Board finally purchased a new 15-acre site north of Oregon Inlet, and Dexter Stetson, the construction foreman who had just completed the Cape Hatteras tower, set to work. The same innovative foundation used at Cape Hatteras was repeated at Bodie Island, with stacked timber pilings below the ground and granite blocks above the base. The 164-foot tower’s first-order Fresnel lens, fabricated by Barbier and Fenestre of Paris, was lit on October 1, 1872.

Click to view enlarged imageExcept for an unfortunate flock of geese crashing into the lens just eighteen days after it was first lit, the lighthouse has had a relatively peaceful existence. Strategically placed screening has protected the lens from further collisions with birds. Originally, the spiral stairway, attached to a the metal lantern at the top and a copper rod that was inserted into the ground at the base, served as the lightning conductor. During a storm, a keeper on one of the stairway landings received a rather severe shock that left the lower half of his body numb for quite some time. An engineer recommended that a conducting cable, insulated from the stairway, be run inside the tower, but it took another lightning strike in 1884, before this alteration was made.

On September 19, 1932 the lighthouse was electrified through the installation of a generator at the station. This led the way to the lighthouse being fully automated in 1940. Ownership of the Bodie Island Light Station, excepting a square plot of land, 100 feet on each side, on which the lighthouse stood, was transferred to the National Park Service in 1953. This same year commercial power was extended to the lighthouse.

For several years, John Gaskill served as a volunteer at the Bodie Island Lighthouse, sharing experiences and stories with visitors who were permitted to enter the base of the tower. John was an excellent docent, as his father, Vernon, was the last principal keeper at Bodie Island, serving from 1919 to 1940. Most people would assume that the keepers had their families with them at Bodie Island, but this was not the case for most of John’s childhood. The only access to the island was by boat at that time, and the closest school was at Manteo on Roanoke Island. John and his siblings lived with their mother in Wanchese so they could attend school, but on holidays and during the summer the family would live together at the lighthouse.

The horizontally banded Bodie Island Lighthouse was officially transferred from the Coast Guard to the National Park Service on July 13, 2000. The structural preservation of the tower thus became the responsibility of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but the Coast Guard was still in charge of maintaining the Fresnel lens, which continued to serve as a navigational aid. In 2003, the Coast Guard announced its intentions to remove the Fresnel lens from the tower. This news was not well received by the public, nor by Jeffrey Crow, head of the North Carolina Historical Preservation Office, who declared that removing the lens would have “an adverse effect upon the historic property.” The Coast Guard was flexible, and a plan was worked out whereby the park service would assume responsibility for the aid to navigation, after it was converted from a federal aid to navigation to a private aid to navigation. The lens was officially transferred at a ceremony held at the lighthouse on April 25, 2005.

As full custodian of the lighthouse, the park service is planning a complete restoration of the tower, which has not received major preservation work since it was constructed. The poor condition of the lighthouse was evidenced on August 9, 2004 when two large cast-iron chunks fell from the gallery atop the tower. Fortunately no one was injured, but the park service has since closed the base of the tower to visitors and erected a fence around the lighthouse to keep people a safe distance away from the lighthouse. The keeper’s duplex now serves as a visitor center, housing a great bookstore and displays about the lighthouse.

Defeat hits hard for Lighthouses Sunshine Coast Daily The result put Caloundra's finals hopes in the balance, with Caboolture now a chance of slipping into the top four at the Lighthouses' expense. ... Teams gear up for the finals runNoosa News all 2 news articles »

Point Lynas lighthouse for sale at £1.5m BBC News Point Lynas lighthouse near Amlwch, on Anglesey, has been put up for sale by owners Robin and Iona Beckmann who have spent 10 years restoring it. ... Lighthouse for sale, £1.5mWalesOnline all 3 news articles »

Docents run historic site for a week Chicago Tribune That's more than Mark and Marti Strehlow and the other Rock Island lighthouse docents earn. But now that lighthouses in America are automated, ... and more »

Lighthouse lovers fundraiser tour Aug. 23-24 Grand Haven Tribune AP Breaking News Video The Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association will be offering lighthouse lovers a two-day lighthouse excursion on northern Lake ...

WTAQ

Federal govt. looks to unload 3 Mich. lighthouses Chicago Tribune The federal government wants to unload three Michigan lighthouses that it no longer needs, and is looking for local communities, museums or nonprofit groups ... South Haven lighthouse on pier is no longer needed, US Coast Guard saysKalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com South Haven lighthouse up for saleWWMT Tours draw crowds to lighthouseJournal Times Herald Palladium (subscription) -Interlochen Public Radio -WTAQ all 51 news articles »

» Saving pieces of the past Umpqua Post Elliott and county park staff say the state once led a PR campaign and events each year to raise awareness for Oregon lighthouses. ...

Shine for Lighthouse? Wall Street Journal The three lighthouses in question are being offered for sale by the federal government, which is seeking owners willing to take the money-burning ... Government giving away lighthousesWashington Post (blog) Awesome Auction Opportunity of the Day: These Three Lighthouses!Curbed (blog) all 4 news articles »

New Lighthouse Project Plan Unveiled Westbury Times Lighthouses are commonly viewed as the marker for seamen to find the coast during storms, add a bit of personality to an island and to serve as a beacon of ... and more »

Divers inspect ailing Del. lighthouse Delmarva Daily Times The damage was so bad the Delaware River & Bay Lighthouse Foundation ceased running summer tours at Harbor of Refuge, and the organization is looking at ... and more »

Door County, Wis., is home to lighthouses, cherries and more St. Louis Post-Dispatch Views of the 1869 Cana Island Lighthouse, one of the most visited sites in Door County. The catwalk at the top of the tower affords spectacular views of the ...

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 Sailing Lessons Carolina   Bald Head Island NC Lighthouse  Cape Hatteras Lighthouse  Oak Island Lighthouse  Bodie Island Lighthouse  North Carolina Lighthouses  Cape Lookout Lighthouse  Ocracoke Lighthouse  Roanoke River Lighthouse  Cape Fear Lighthouse  Currituck Beach Lighthouse  Prices Creek Lighthouse  sailing alantic 

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Bodie Island Lighthouse North Carolina Lighthouses Restoration

Reportedly, Bodie Island, originally “Body,” is named after the family who owned the land, but folklore would have it that the name resulted from the many shipwrecked bodies that washed ashore. Rising 165 feet and painted with striking black and white stripes, the picture-perfect Bodie Island Lighthouse is actually the third attempt to illuminate the perilous stretch of coast between Cape Hatteras and Currituck Beach.

Because of the mounting number of shipwrecks off this section of North Carolina’s outer banks, in 1837 the federal government sent the impressively named Lieutenant Napoleon L. Coste to determine the best location for another lighthouse. He suggested that a light 35 miles north of Cape Hatteras, on or near Bodie Island, would allow south-bound ships to fix their positions for navigating the menacing Cape.

Although Congress immediately agreed, the construction of the original lighthouse was fraught with problems, beginning with a ten-year delay because of difficulties in acquiring the land. Once the purchase finally went through, the man who approved all lighthouse expenditures (The Fifth Auditor of the Treasury), was far more interested in saving money than in building a lighthouse. Although normally we would applaud efforts to curtail government spending, in this case it was disastrous. As if having Scrooge holding the purse strings wasn’t bad enough, the overseer of the construction was a retired Customs official who knew nothing about lighthouses and ignored the engineer’s recommendations. The result was a monument to inefficiency. The 54-foot tower housed not a Fresnel lens, but an inferior reflector lighting system that frequently didn’t work. The unsupported brick foundation quickly developed cracks and leaks and began to sink on one side. Within a couple of years the lighthouse resembled the leaning Tower of Pisa, without the cultural cachet, and had to be abandoned. A mere eleven years after it was constructed, the now derelict lighthouse was razed.

The second lighthouse, although better built, fared even worse. Completed in 1859, the new Bodie Island Lighthouse was designed by the trusty Army Corps of Engineers, and boasted a graceful 80-foot tower of whitewashed brick and an iron lantern room. The third-order Fresnel lens was visible fifteen miles out to sea, but almost immediately the Civil War brought an end to its usefulness. Retreating Confederate soldiers, trying to foil the Union Navy any way they could, blew up the lighthouse in 1861. Bodie’s Fresnel lens was later discovered by Union troops in the rotunda of the North Carolina Capitol building, where “a vast pile of lighthouse apparatus: costly lamps and reflectors of Fresnel and Argand” had been cached by the Confederates.

Perhaps dispirited about their first two doomed attempts at Bodie Island, the Lighthouse Board dragged their feet commissioning another lighthouse. It took several years of vehement petitions from understandably concerned sea captains for construction to begin on a third lighthouse. In 1871 the Lighthouse Board finally purchased a new 15-acre site north of Oregon Inlet, and Dexter Stetson, the construction foreman who had just completed the Cape Hatteras tower, set to work. The same innovative foundation used at Cape Hatteras was repeated at Bodie Island, with stacked timber pilings below the ground and granite blocks above the base. The 164-foot tower’s first-order Fresnel lens, fabricated by Barbier and Fenestre of Paris, was lit on October 1, 1872.

Click to view enlarged imageExcept for an unfortunate flock of geese crashing into the lens just eighteen days after it was first lit, the lighthouse has had a relatively peaceful existence. Strategically placed screening has protected the lens from further collisions with birds. Originally, the spiral stairway, attached to a the metal lantern at the top and a copper rod that was inserted into the ground at the base, served as the lightning conductor. During a storm, a keeper on one of the stairway landings received a rather severe shock that left the lower half of his body numb for quite some time. An engineer recommended that a conducting cable, insulated from the stairway, be run inside the tower, but it took another lightning strike in 1884, before this alteration was made.

On September 19, 1932 the lighthouse was electrified through the installation of a generator at the station. This led the way to the lighthouse being fully automated in 1940. Ownership of the Bodie Island Light Station, excepting a square plot of land, 100 feet on each side, on which the lighthouse stood, was transferred to the National Park Service in 1953. This same year commercial power was extended to the lighthouse.

For several years, John Gaskill served as a volunteer at the Bodie Island Lighthouse, sharing experiences and stories with visitors who were permitted to enter the base of the tower. John was an excellent docent, as his father, Vernon, was the last principal keeper at Bodie Island, serving from 1919 to 1940. Most people would assume that the keepers had their families with them at Bodie Island, but this was not the case for most of John’s childhood. The only access to the island was by boat at that time, and the closest school was at Manteo on Roanoke Island. John and his siblings lived with their mother in Wanchese so they could attend school, but on holidays and during the summer the family would live together at the lighthouse.

The horizontally banded Bodie Island Lighthouse was officially transferred from the Coast Guard to the National Park Service on July 13, 2000. The structural preservation of the tower thus became the responsibility of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but the Coast Guard was still in charge of maintaining the Fresnel lens, which continued to serve as a navigational aid. In 2003, the Coast Guard announced its intentions to remove the Fresnel lens from the tower. This news was not well received by the public, nor by Jeffrey Crow, head of the North Carolina Historical Preservation Office, who declared that removing the lens would have “an adverse effect upon the historic property.” The Coast Guard was flexible, and a plan was worked out whereby the park service would assume responsibility for the aid to navigation, after it was converted from a federal aid to navigation to a private aid to navigation. The lens was officially transferred at a ceremony held at the lighthouse on April 25, 2005.

As full custodian of the lighthouse, the park service is planning a complete restoration of the tower, which has not received major preservation work since it was constructed. The poor condition of the lighthouse was evidenced on August 9, 2004 when two large cast-iron chunks fell from the gallery atop the tower. Fortunately no one was injured, but the park service has since closed the base of the tower to visitors and erected a fence around the lighthouse to keep people a safe distance away from the lighthouse. The keeper’s duplex now serves as a visitor center, housing a great bookstore and displays about the lighthouse.

Door County, Wis., is home to lighthouses, cherries and more St. Louis Post-Dispatch Views of the 1869 Cana Island Lighthouse, one of the most visited sites in Door County. The catwalk at the top of the tower affords spectacular views of the ...

Lighthouse closing in August for month Boca Beacon As the Port Boca Grande Lighthouse closes for the month of August for maintenance, the Barrier Island Parks Society has announced what their latest ...

The last keeper of the Harbor Refuge Lighthouse now helps conduct boat tours ... Press of Atlantic City Rigazio was the last keeper of the lighthouse, which sits at the mouth of the Delaware Bay. Angelo Rigazio wasn't there when the men built the base of the ...

Cruise around Cape Ann and learn about lighthouses Wicked Local (blog) By Anonymous The annual Lighthouses of Cape Ann cruise will be held Friday, July 30, leaving at 6 pm from Cape Ann Whale Watch in Gloucester aboard the ... and more »

Iran, culture, dining on tap in free talks in Madison Madison Eagle Included in the slide show are original photographs of Jersey Shore lighthouses, amusement parks, piers and motels, as well as historic maps and images. ... Workshops in basket making, cereal box art free at Madison libraryMadison Eagle all 2 news articles »

Throwing light on country's history AsiaOne ENTIRE stories and movies have been constructed around lighthouses -- those solitary guides for ships navigating sometimes treacherous waters. ...

WTAQ

Federal govt. looks to unload 3 Mich. lighthouses Chicago Tribune The federal government wants to unload three Michigan lighthouses that it no longer needs, and is looking for local communities, museums or nonprofit groups ... Lighthouses for sale, U.S. Coast Guard says they're not neededDetroit Free Press South Haven lighthouse on pier is no longer needed, US Coast Guard saysKalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com South Haven has its eyes on lighthouseHerald Palladium (subscription) WWMT -Journal Times -WTAQ all 51 news articles »

Beach Connection

Oregon Coast Secrets Abound in Newport For the Summer Beach Connection Deep sea fishing, crabbing, lighthouses, special family events, more outdoor dining than anywhere else on the coast and a new butterfly attraction are part ...

Shine for Lighthouse? Wall Street Journal The three lighthouses in question are being offered for sale by the federal government, which is seeking owners willing to take the money-burning ... Government giving away lighthousesWashington Post (blog) Awesome Auction Opportunity of the Day: These Three Lighthouses!Curbed (blog) all 4 news articles »

Last at the light Lake County News Chronicle When Coast Guard member Mike Roberts was assigned to duty at Split Rock Lighthouse in November of 1966, he had no idea he would be the last keeper to serve ...

Common Misspellings include adquiring, aquiring actualy aggreed, agred almsot, alomst allthough altho, althought, altough adn, anbd annouced, anounced anohter aroud, arround, arund asume attemp, attemt attemts awya barber becamae baceause, beacuse, becasue, beccause, becouse, becuase bedore, befoer, befor beggin beggining, beggining, begining, beginnig beng betwen, bewteen inbetween, vetween balck boaut bu cerimony, ceromony caost commerical, commericial comisioning, comissioning, commisioning conserned condidtion congreso consttruction, constuction, contruction contined coverted cooper coudl, sould desgined, dessigned developped dificulties disasterous, disatrous dicovered buring, durig, durring, duting eahc effords engeneer, engieneer engieneers erested excelent, excellant, exelent, exellent existance, existince familes, fimilies fedral, fedral feat, fet, fete fianlly, finaly firt, firts frequentily fomr, frome furuther, futher govement, govenment, govenrment, goverment, goverment, governmnet, govorment, govornment gracefull gerat, graet, grat, gret gaurd ahev, ahve, haev, hvae, hvea hvaing historial emmediately, imediately, immediatley, immediatly, immidately, immidiately inot it's jstu larg lastr, lsat lead, leaded lefted leutenant lightening lieved maked maintinaing mear moeny moreso, mroe, omre anme, naem, nmae noeth, noth nto, onot nowe offical offcially, offically, officialy lonly, onyl orginal, origional orginally, origanaly, originall, originaly, originially, originnally, origionally, orignally, orignially peopel pwoer pricipal privte pubic quicklyu qtuie, qutie reseived, resieved, recived, recieved recomended, reccomended, reccommended reccomendations, recommedations relutively, relativly, realitvely, relitavely reportadly ressembled responnsibilty, responsability, responsiblity restauration smae sevice severeal sicne, sinse sose soilders, soliders smoe, soem sourth sqaure staion storeis, storise stratagically sytem tahn, thna taht, tath, thast, thgat, thta, thyat hten, tghe, ther, thge, tjhe ther, theri, thier, thier htey, tehy, tyhe thrid htis, thsi, tihs throught, thru tiem, timne, tiome toghether transfered troups twpo uopn, apon unsed wiew visable vistors volonteer, volounteer wass, weas, ws vell wehn, whn hwihc, whcih, whic, whihc, whlch, wich withing owrk, wokr, wrok owudl, woudl eyar, yearm, yera eyars, eyasr, yeasr, yeras, yersa pitcher pic pictrue ,
 Sailing Lessons Carolina   Bald Head Island NC Lighthouse  Cape Hatteras Lighthouse  Oak Island Lighthouse  Bodie Island Lighthouse  North Carolina Lighthouses  Cape Lookout Lighthouse  Ocracoke Lighthouse  Roanoke River Lighthouse  Cape Fear Lighthouse  Currituck Beach Lighthouse  Prices Creek Lighthouse  sailing alantic