The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, which provides information and links for more than 15,200 of the world's lighthouses. Latest update May 27, 2012. This week the pages for Western Normandy in France, East and South Iceland, the Åland Islands of Finland, Kenya, the Balearic Islands of Spain, The Shengsi and Qiqu Islands of China, Western Prince Edward Island in Canada, the U.S. state of Virginia, South Australia, and the Yeosu Area of Korea have been checked and revised, with many new photos.

GOOGLE SITE SEARCH (of unc.edu) 

Phare de Gatteville
Gatteville Light, Gatteville-le-Phare, Western Normandy, France, July 2006
Flickr Creative Commons photo by Mickael Duval

A Month of Lighthouse News:

  • May 26. New visitor facilities have been completed at Michigan's McGulpin Point Lighthouse, just in time for the summer season.
  • May 25. The $1.3 million restoration of Oregon's Heceta Head Light has drawn specialized contractors from across the nation.
  • May 19. After $700,000 in restoration, the Fort Gratiot Lighthouse in Port Huron, Michigan, has reopened for tours.
  • May 18. The Coast Guard has finished a project to repaint Florida's Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse.
  • May 18. Volunteer painter Iain Grieve is up for an award for his work repainting Northumberland's Berwick Upon Tweed Lighthouse.
  • May 17. In Wales, the Wildlife Trust has purchased the Skokholm Lighthouse with plans to restore it for overnight accommodations.
  • May 17. The 50th anniversary of the Charleston Lighthouse at Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, will be celebrated on June 16.
  • May 15. In Long Beach, California, the $1.8 million exterior restoration of the Angel's Gate Lighthouse has been completed.
  • May 15. Douglas County, Oregon, has taken ownership of the Umpqua River Lighthouse in a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
  • May 15. Preservation groups in Rochester, New York, are fighting the preserve the view of Lake Ontario from the Charlotte-Genessee Lighthouse.
  • May 11. In Scotland, a £5.4 million contract has been awarded for restoration and redevelopment of the Sumbergh Lighthouse in Shetland.
  • May 11. South Africa has announced a 4.2 million rand ($504,000) restoration project for the Cape Agulhas Lighthouse at the southernmost tip of Africa.
  • May 10. Commissioners in Port St. Joseph, Florida, are working on plans to relocate the Cape San Blas Lighthouse to save it from beach erosion.
  • May 8. In the Philippines, the Poro Point Management Corp. has agreed to restore the U.S.-built lighthouse and the historic Spanish Lighthouse at San Fernando in northern Luzon.
  • May 7. In England, the St. Mary's Lighthouse in North Tyneside has been recognized as a Grade II historic site.
  • May 6. A campaign to raise £25,000 to repaint England's historic Beachy Head Lighthouse has passed its halfway mark.
  • May 5. The City of Los Angeles will apply for ownership of the Point Fermin Lighthouse in San Pedro.
  • May 5. Washington's Point No Point Lighthouse reopens May 12 after $100,000 in renovations.
  • May 3. The restoration of the keeper's house at Maine's Wood Island Lighthouse has been completed.
  • May 2. In Edenton, North Carolina, the Roanoke River Lighthouse has moved to its final location on pilings just offshore. A time-lapse video of this move is available.
  • May 2. Ireland's Roancarrigmore Lighthouse has been deactivated; the light was moved to a modern beacon.
  • May 1. Scotland's famous Turnberry Lighthouse will be deactivated and sold for luxury accommodations for golfers.

Huaniaoshan Light
Huaniaoshan Light, Shengsi County, Zhejiang, China
Shengsi County Media Bureau photo

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.

The Directory has over 30,000 links, and all of them were appropriate and legitimate when they were added. Occasionally, because a web site is hacked or a URL is captured, a link leads not to legitimate information but to an inappropriate site, such as a source of pornography or malicious software. Please let me know if this happens, and I will remove the offending link immediately.

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

Far de Cap Salines
Cap Salines Light, Santanyí, Majorca, Balearic Islands, Spain, April 2012
Wikimedia Creative Commons photo by Olaf Tausch

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 #.

Flötjan Fyr
Flötjan Fyr, Lemland, Åland Islands, Finland, August 2009
Wikimedia Creative Commons photo by Islander

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 height of a light is the height above the surface of the water at which the light is displayed. (The level of the water surface is usually "mean high water," the level at an average high tide.) In the listings, "focal plane" refers to the focal plane height. 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.

Ra's Serani Range Rear Light
Ra's Serani Range Rear Light, Mombasa, Kenya, August 2007
photo copyright Mike Hooley; used by permission

Articles about lighthouses:

Old Point Comfort Light
Old Point Comfort Light, Hampton, Virginia, U.S.A., June 2008
Flickr Creative Commons photo by C.M. Hanchey

Special Resources

Cape Willoughby Light
Cape Willoughby Light, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, October 2008
Flickr Creative Commons photo by Helen K

North Cape Light
North Cape Light, Tignish, Western Prince Edward Island, Canada, August 2010
Flickr Creative Commons photo by Stephen Downes

Knarraros Light
Knarrarós Light, Stokkseyri, East and South Iceland, August 2008
Flickr Creative Commons photo by Seli Oskarsson

Sorido Light
Sorido Light, Yeosu, Korea
Yeosu Port Office photo

Regional, state, and local lighthouse preservation organizations are recognized on each U.S. 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.

Baijieshan Light
Baijieshan Light, Shengsi Islands, Zhejiang, China
Shengsi County Media Bureau photo

Far de Moscarter
Moscarter Light, Sant Joan de Labritja, Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain, 2010
Ports de Baleares photo
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

Belgium and Netherlands

Germany and Austria

Denmark, Faroes, and Iceland

Norway (listed south to north)

Sweden (listed south to north)

Poland, Baltic States, and Finland

Northwestern Russia (southwest to northeast)

Lighthouses of Asia

Western and Central Asia

Southwest Asia

India

Southeast Asia

Indonesia

China and Taiwan

Asiatic Russia

Korea (listed clockwise around the peninsula)

Japan (listed clockwise around the main islands)

Phare de la Pointe de Saire
Pointe de Saire Light, Réville, Western Normandy, France, June 2007
Wikimedia public domain photo by Rundvald

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 2012 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.