Chikiu (Tikiu) Misaki Light, Muroran, Southeastern Hokkaidō, Japan, May 2013
Wikimedia Creative Commons photo by Highten31
A Month of Lighthouse News:
- May 22. A ceremony June 8 marks the transfer of the North Head Lighthouse to Washington State Parks.
- May 22. The centennial of Washington's Alki Point Lighthouse will be celebrated June 1.
- May 21. The Florida governor has approved the legislature's appropriation of $325,000 for relocation of the Cape San Blas lighthouse.
- May 16. The auction sale of the Saybrook Breakwater Lighthouse in Connecticut has begun.
- May 15. A land trust is spending over £300,000 to buy land surrounding Scotland's Mull of Galloway Lighthouse.
- May 14. The lantern has been installed atop the Round Island Lighthouse in Pascagoula, Mississippi; reconstruction continues.
- May 12. Cape Cod Potato Chips is sponsoring the repainting of the Nauset Beach Light in Massachusetts.
- May 11. Fundraising is underway for restoration of the interior at Rhode Island's Pomham Rocks Light.
- May 11. Princess Anne has expressed her horror at proposals to build a windfarm around Scotland's famous Skerryvore Lighthouse.
- May 9. Exterior restoration and repainting of Florida's Sanibel Island Lighthouse will begin soon.
- May 9. The Coast Guard has turned off the malfunctioning fog horn at the Borden Flats Light in Massachusetts.
- May 8. The Cape Bear Lighthouse in Prince Edward Island will be moved 65 m (213 ft) this summer to escape beach erosion.
- May 6. The first order lens of the Thatcher Island South lighthouse in Massachusetts is being installed at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester.
- May 6. England's iconic Beachy Head Lighthouse is being repainted, thanks to £27,000 raised locally.
- May 6. Hawaii's recently-restored Kilauea Point Lighthouse was relit May 4, three days after its 100th anniversary.
- May 3. The Cromwell Point Lighthouse in Ireland's County Kerry will open for tours for the first time in June.
- May 1. Six lighthouses, including four in Michigan, have been made available under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act.
Pointe de Ver Light, Ver-sur-Mer, Basse-Normandie, France, May 2009
Flickr Creative Commons photo by
Larry Myhre
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.
Ra's Bir Light, Obock, Djibouti, November 2011
photo copyright Jean-François Rodriguez-Nadal
used by permission
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 #.
Marcus Hook Range Rear Light, Bellefonte, Delaware, U.S.A., July 2008
Flickr Creative Commons photo copyright C.W. Bash
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.
Málaga Light, Málaga, Eastern Andalusia, Spain, December 2012
Wikimedia Creative Commons photo by Daniel Capilla
Articles about lighthouses:
- The Oldest U.S. Towers, 1764-1791
- Early Federal Octagonals, 1792-1817
- Old Style Brick Lighthouses, 1820-1849
- Oldest Integral Lighthouses, 1830-1853
- Tall Towers of Iron, 1846-1881
- Early Classic Brick Towers, 1850-1869
- Onshore Skeletal Lighthouses, 1861-1910
- Sparkplug Lighthouses, 1871-1926
- Canada's Flying-Buttress Lighthouses, 1908-1910
- Unstaffed Offshore Lights of the Florida Keys, 1921-1935
- Storm Warning Towers
Low Head Light, Georgetown, Tasmania, Australia, New Year's Day 2008
Flickr Creative Commons photo by Sarah Olmstead
Special Resources
- Lighthouse Development in Mozambique, 1908-1931
- Lighthouses of the Khasan District, Russian Far East
- Panama Canal Range Lights (pdf document, 652 kB)
- The Tallest Lighthouses
Ospøytåa Light, Solund, Sognefjord, Norway, July 2012
Panoramio photo copyright Arno Siering; used by permission
Berbera (Mayara) Light, Somaliland, January 2003
Flickr photo copyright Camelboyz; used by permission
Jude's Point Light, Tignish, Western Prince Edward Island, Canada, September 2011
Panoramio Creative Commons photo by Bob Linsdell
Erimo Misaki Light, Erimo, Southeastern Hokkaidō, Japan, June 2012
Wikimedia Creative Commons photo by Highten31
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.
Cap Lihou Light, Granville, Basse-Normandie, France, August 2012
Wikimedia Creative Commons photo by HaguardDuNord
Fenwick Island Light, Fenwick Island, Delaware, U.S.A., October
2008
Flickr photo copyright 2008 Michael Burton Roark; used by permission
Cabo de Gata Light, Almería, Eastern Andalusia, Spain, April 2007
Flickr Creative Commons photo by Jesús Rubio García
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)
Barawa Light, Somalia, November 1986
Flickr photo copyright Nicola Prisco; used by permission