The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, which provides information and links for more than 11,700 of the world's lighthouses. Latest update December 28, 2009. Best wishes to everyone for the New Year! This week the pages for Colombia's Caribbean coast and the Kuril Islands of Russia have been expanded and improved based on new research by Michel Forand. The pages for Eastern Wisconsin in the U.S. and for Liaoning in China have been renovated with many new photos. The pages for the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, the Southern Netherlands, and Sweden's Lake Mälaren have also been checked and revised, with some new photos added.

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Vuurtoren Scheveningen, Southern Netherlands, September 2006
anonymous Creative Commons photo

A Month of Lighthouse News:

  • December 29. Support is increasing for a proposal to rebuild the keeper's house at the Long Point Lighthouse on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
  • December 27. Renovations are underway at North Carolina's Ocracoke Lighthouse.
  • December 24. A $2 million federal appropriation will restore the Brockton Point Lighthouse in Vancouver, British Columbia.
  • December 13. Hawaii's Kauhola Point Lighthouse has been demolished.
  • December 12. A bid has been accepted for construction of the Oak Orchard Lighthouse replica on Lake Ontario in New York.
  • December 10. A $33,000 grant will restore the windows at Washington's Point Robinson Lighthouse.
  • December 10. New Jersey's Ludlum Beach Lighthouse will probably remain where it is for another year.
  • December 5. The state of Mississippi will allow restoration funding to be used for reconstruction of the Round Island Lighthouse in Pascagoula.
  • December 4. The Alabama Historical Commission has unanimously rejected a suggestion to remove the Mobile Middle Bay Light from its station.
  • December 4. At Kennewick, Washington, the new Clover Island Lighthouse is taking shape; completion is expected in February.
  • December 1. Michigan's Grand Traverse Light has begun offering overnight accommodations during the winter season.


North Point Light, Milwaukee, Eastern Wisconsin, U.S.A., March 2009
Creative Commons photo by John Skodak

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.


Nandaquan Light, Dalian, Liaoning, China
PRC Maritime Safety Administration photo

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 #.


Faro de Santa Marta, Colombia: Caribbean Sea
photo copyright Capt. Peter Mosselberger; used by permission.

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.


Atlasova Light, Kuril Islands, Russia, August 2007
photo copyright Sophie Atkinson; used by permission

Articles about lighthouses:


Wind Point Light, Eastern Wisconsin, U.S.A., September 2006
Creative Commons photo by Dawn Perry

Special Resources

Laotieshan Light
Laotieshan Light, Liaoning, China
PRC Maritime Safety Administration photo

Slagstaholm Fyr
Slagstaholm Fyr, Lake Mälaren, Sweden, June 2007
Creative Commons photo by Per Ola Wiberg


Vuurtoren Maasvlakte, Southern Netherlands, July 2005
photo copyright Marc de Kleijn; used by permission

Tanjung Pakijongan Light
Tanjung Pakijongan Light, Sumbawa, Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia
photo copyright Rob Hurvitz; used by permission

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.


Diaolongzui Light (left) and Huanhaisi Light, Liaoning, China
PRC Maritime Safety Administration photos
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

India

Southeast Asia

Indonesia

China and Taiwan

Korea and Russian Far East

Japan


Faro de Cayo Palma, Isla Providencia, Colombia: Caribbean Sea
January 2008; anonymous Creative Commons photo

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.