The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, which provides information and links for more than 11,600 of the world's lighthouses. Latest update November 2, 2009. Thanks to Michel Forand for research that has doubled the length of the page for Kaliningrad, and to Jonas Karlsson for permission to use his photo of Nidingen Fyr in the Swedish county of Halland. This week the pages for Southwestern Ontario, Catalonia, Guadeloupe, Sri Lanka, Angola, Namibia, and Northern Ireland have also been checked and revised, many with new photos added.

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Nidingen Fyr
Nidingen Fyr (northeast tower), July 2008
photo copyright Jonas Karlsson; used by permission

A Month of Lighthouse News:

  • November 5. Port officials in Busan, South Korea, have announced plans for a directional light atop the 119 m (390 ft) Busan Tower.
  • November 4. In Michigan, the Grand Haven City Council has approved a proposal to acquire the city's two pierhead lighthouses.
  • October 30. Maine's Whaleback Light has been upgraded with a radio-controlled fog signal and a new VLB-44 lens.
  • October 28. The Coast Guard is proceeding with plans to demolish the Kauhola Lighthouse in Hawaii.
  • October 27. The Coast Guard is repairing the Duxbury Pier (Bug) Light in Massachusetts; more complete restoration will follow in 2010.
  • October 23. The reconstructed Cape St. George Light in Florida will be activated October 31 as a private aid to navigation.
  • October 22. The lightship LV-112 Nantucket, now at Oyster Bay, Long Island, has been sold for $1 to the U.S. Lightship Museum of Boston.
  • October 17. New Jersey's Ludlum Beach Light may be spared demolition; the city has offered it a new site.
  • October 17. Smeaton's Tower, the famous 1759 Eddystone Lighthouse, has celebrated its 250th anniversary in Plymouth, England.
  • October 14. Vandals have damaged the interior of the "Big Red" lighthouse at Holland, Michigan.
  • October 12. Oman has activated the new Ra's Raysut lighthouse at Salalah on the Arabian Sea.
  • October 6. Federal officials in Australia have announced an award of $1.3 million for restoration of the Breaksea Island Light in Western Australia.
  • October 6. In the Shetland Islands, a grant of £683,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund will allow restoration of the Sumbergh Head Light; the restored lighthouse will be opened to the public for the first time.

Galle Light
Galle Light, Sri Lanka, January 2009
Creative Commons photo by David Trattnig

About this site
Founded in 1999 (during the relocation of North Carolina's Cape Hatteras lighthouse), the Lighthouse Directory is a tool for research and study concerning lighthouses and efforts to preserve those lighthouses. The Directory provides a brief compilation of basic data for each lighthouse with links to other reliable information available on the Internet. With the addition of the Hainan page in February 2009, listings now cover the entire world. However, this doesn't mean the Directory is complete, because new information continues to come to light.

I'm glad to hear from site visitors, especially if you have lighthouse news or photos of rarely-visited lighthouses.

This site is hosted by my employer, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

St. John's Point Light
St. John's Point Light, Northern Ireland, U.K., July 2009
Geograph Creative Commons photo by Henry Clark

What is a lighthouse?
It is not so easy to define exactly what we mean by a lighthouse, and various organizations and individuals have used very different definitions when describing or classifying lighthouses. Clearly, all lighthouses are lighted aids to navigation, but not all lighted aids are considered to be lighthouses.

Some definitions are not controversial. An aid to navigation is a structure placed on or near navigable water to provide visual guidance to mariners. A beacon is an aid to navigation that is fixed in place (that is, not floating). A lighted beacon or lightbeacon is a beacon displaying a light, while an unlit beacon is called a daybeacon. Often, a lighted beacon is simply called a light.

In this Directory, a lighthouse is a lightbeacon having a height of at least 4 meters (13 ft) and a cross-section, at the base, of at least 4 square meters (43 sq ft). This simple definition does not require that a lighthouse have any particular form or appearance. The structure of a lighthouse may be enclosed, partially enclosed, or completely open.

The Directory includes listings of certain lights and other sites of interest to lighthouse fans that aren't lighthouses by this definition. The titles of those listings are enclosed in square brackets [...]. In addition, lighthouses destroyed or demolished since 2000 continue to be listed; their names are preceded by a pound sign #.

Point Abino Light
Point Abino Light, Fort Erie, Southwestern Ontario, Canada, June 2009
Creative Commons photo by Ray Ordinario

The lighthouse listings
Dates shown for lighthouses are the dates when the light was first displayed; this may be later than the construction date in some cases. A station establishment date, when listed, is the date when a light was first displayed at or near the same location. Data concerning the characteristics of lights comes mostly from the U.S. Coast Guard Light List for U.S. lighthouses and from the NGA List of Lights for lighthouses in other countries.

The focal plane of a light is the height above the surface of the water at which the light is displayed. A lantern of a lighthouse is a room or structure that actually encloses the light.

The heights of the lighthouse towers themselves should be considered approximate. Different sources use different methods for measuring tower heights, and those heights may actually change due to changes in ground level at the base of the tower.

I have attempted to determine whether lighthouse sites and towers are open to the public. This information is inferred from whatever sources may be available; it is certainly not guaranteed. Please let me know if this information, or any information in the Directory, is incorrect.

Lighthouse listings are marked with ratings of zero to four stars based on the extent to which the light station is open to visitors. Check the ratings key to interpret these ratings.

Mys Taran Light
Mys Taran Light, Kaliningrad, June 2009
Panoramio photo copyright Evgeny Khaev
permission requested

Articles about lighthouses:

Far de la Banya
Tarragona Dique de Levante (1864 Far de la Banya), Catalonia, Spain, April 2009
 Creative Commons photo by Sergio Morchon

Special Resources

Phare du Vieux-Fort
Phare du Vieux-Fort, Guadeloupe, May 2003
photo copyright Nathalie Bibrac; permission requested

Lobito Light
Lobito Light, Angola, September 2007
photo copyright Claus Bunks; used by permission

Norrskär Light
Norrskär Light, Gulf of Bothnia, Western Finland, June 2008
Creative Commons photo by Hagen and Tine Graf

Pelican Point Light
Pelican Point Light, Walvis Bay, Namibia, May 2007
Creative Commons photo by Carlos Reis
Lighthouses of the Americas

Northeastern United States

Southeastern United States

Midwestern United States

Western United States and U.S. Pacific Territories

U.S. Caribbean

Atlantic Canada and Greenland

Interior and Western Canada

Bermuda and the West Indies

Mexico and Central America

South America and Antarctica

Lighthouses of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Australia, and Africa

Pacific Ocean

Australia

South Indian Ocean

Africa

Lighthouses of Europe

Britain and Ireland

France, Monaco and Switzerland

Spain and Portugal

Italy and Malta

Southeastern Europe

Northern Europe

Denmark, Faroes, and Iceland

Norway

Sweden

Lighthouses of Asia

Western and Central Asia

South and Southwest Asia

Southeast Asia

Indonesia

China and Taiwan

Korea and Russian Far East

Japan

Seven Foot Knoll Light
Seven Foot Knoll Light, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., September 2007
anonymous Creative Commons photo

Regional, state, and local lighthouse preservation organizations are recognized on each state page. U.S. organizations interested in lighthouse preservation nationally are:

  • The American Lighthouse Foundation, based in Rockland, Maine. ALF encourages preservation efforts throughout the country and holds preservation leases on more than a dozen New England lighthouses.
  • The United States Lighthouse Society, formerly based in San Francisco, has moved to the Point No Point Lighthouse in Hansville, Washington. USLHS has chapters active in the Chesapeake area, Long Island, Oregon, and Washington, and has been active in supporting preservation in other areas as well. The Society also publishes a respected journal, The Keeper's Log.

Lighthouses on the Internet: A Researcher's Guide has replaced the list of links formerly on this page.

Thanks to:

Hundreds of lighthouse fans around the world have enriched this site with their assistance, information, suggestions, and corrections. For a long time I tried to maintain a list of these many friends and contacts, but it has grown too long (and too out of date) to display here. However, I must extend special thanks to Jeremy D'Entremont, Michel Forand, Ted Sarah, and Klaus Huelse, who have followed the development of the Directory for years. Each of them has contributed information and support in vital ways, and the Directory would be much less useful without their participation.

Formalities

Written by:

Russ Rowlett, Director,
Center for Mathematics and Science Education
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

You are welcome to email the author (rowlett@email.unc.edu) with comments and suggestions.

All material in The Lighthouse Directory is copyright 2009 by Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some images are presented by permission of their copyright holders, as noted under the image.

Permission is granted to copy portions of the Directory for personal use and study, but all other rights are reserved. You are welcome to make links to this page or to any page of the Directory, provided you credit the source and do not present the work as your own.

Please do not copy the contents of any page of the Directory to another site. This is an infringement of copyright, and it also deprives your users of the benefit of improvements and corrections made to the page.

The information contained in the directory is as accurate as I can make it; please notify me if you find any errors. Neither the author nor the University of North Carolina assumes any liability for uses made of the information presented by this web site.