The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, providing information and links for more than 24,700 of the world's lighthouses. Follow the Directory's new Bluesky feed (@lhdirectory.bsky.social) for the latest in lighthouse news and Directory updates. Latest update May 2, 2026.

This week the pages for Réunion, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, Southern Tàizhōu in Zhèjiāng Province of China, Northern Papua (Papua Province) in Indonesia, the Uljin Area in North Gyeongsang County in South Korea, Faroes, Bremerhaven in Germany, Ölund in Kalmar County in Sweden, Eastern Cape Province in South Africa, Campania in Italy, the Northern Spratly Islands, and Southern British Columbia in Canada have been checked and revised with improved information and many new photos.

Also in the Directory: A Checklist of Lightships in the world. Included are some 127 ships surviving, restored, abandoned, or recently scrapped.

Special thanks this week to Andreas Köhler for comments on two lighthouses in Greece and to Jim Smith for comments on last week's revisions.

GOOGLE SITE SEARCH (of ibiblio.org; include the word "lighthouse" in your search)

 


Pointe de Bel-Air Light, Sainte-Suzanne, Réunion, February 2024
ex-Google Maps photo by Jean Luc Abelard

A Month of Lighthouse News:

  • May 2. The Municipality of Cumberland, Nova Scotia, will hire two full-time staff for the Cape d’Or Lighthouse this summer. In addition $75,000 has been allocated for improvements to fencing, trails, signage and buildings this year.
  • May 1. Owners of the Middle Ground Lighthouse in Hampton Roads, Virginia, have put the lighthouse on sale, calling for best offers by July 4. This offshore lighthouse is fully restored as a vacation home.
  • May 1. Volunteers turn out for a work day at the keeper's house of the former Slip Point Lighthouse in Clallam Bay, Washington. Restoration of this historic house is just getting underway.
  • April 30. A new Keepers of the Light Fund will support maintenance and restoration of the Abbott Memorial Lighthouse in Santa Cruz, California. The first need is $25,000 to replace the beacon of the lighthouse with modern equipment.
  • April 30. The Michigan Lighthouse Conservancy has purchased the lantern room of the former Ballast Point Lighthouse in San Diego, California, and will move it to Michigan this summer. The lantern room has been outside a San Diego business since 1998.
  • April 29. Following a successful 2025 season, St. Joe Today will offer tours of the St. Joseph Inner Pierhead Lighthouse in Michigan every Saturday from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day. The NPO's plans were approved by St. Joseph City commissioners.
  • April 26. The very popular Cape Enragé Lighthouse in New Brunswick will remain closed this summer because the provincial government, citing budget problems, has declined to provide its usual support of $100,000 for repairs and maintenance.
  • April 23. Diane Rapp has retired after 39 years of service as a key manager at the Barnegat Lighthouse ("Old Barney") in New Jersey, first as a volunteer and then as a State Parks employee. /
  • April 21. Lifeboat crew saves a visitor to the St. Mary's Lighthouse in North Tyneside, England, who suffered a medical emergency while lighthouse access was cut off by high tide. The crew was from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)), which protects all British coasts.
  • April 21. Also in England, the West Norfolk Council has approved plans to replace the roof of the privately-owned 1840 Hunstanton Lighthouse. Inactive for more than a century, this historic lighthouse is a popular vacation renal.
  • April 19. Boaters in Long Island, New York, are warned that the light of the Huntington Harbor Lighthouse has failed. The Coast Guard has been notified and will repair the light.
  • April 17. The lantern and watch room of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse in North Carolina have been disassembled and sent to the Robinson Iron company in Alabama for restoration, part of the $15.2 million restoration of the lighthouse. A temporary light is shown from the scaffolding.
  • April 16. The Watchet Lighthouse in Somerset, England, shows a green light but has always been painted red. To correct this navigational error the sea-facing side of the lighthouse will now be painted green while the land-facing side will keep the traditional red.
  • April 16. After failing to sell in 2024 the 1897 Smith Point Lighthouse is back on the market for $450,000. The lighthouse is off the mouth of the Potomac River in the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay.
  • April 15. Lighthouse Keepers, the nonprofit managing the Big Sable Point Lighthouse in Michigan, has reached its $450,000 goal to finance an exterior restoration of the lighthouse next year, removing paint, removing mold, restoring brickwork, and repainting.
  • April 15. Somehow the storm door is off its hinges at the Thunder Bay Lighthouse on Lake Superior, Ontario. The Coast Guard is preparing a trip to make repairs.
  • April 7. The Point Vicente Lighthouse will celebrate its 100th anniversary this Saturday, April 11. The lighthouse is in Rancho Palos Verdes, a city in Los Angeles County, California.
  • April 4. Great news: with a 3.5 year, $3 million restoration in its final weeks, the Hunting Island Lighthouse has been cleared for its reopening by state officials with the South Carolina State Parks office.
  • April 3. While developing a historical exhibit for the Dice Head Lighthouse, the Town of Castine, Maine,.discovered a dozen mortar shells on the property. Believed to be British shells from the War of 1812, the shells contain no explosives and several will be added to the exhibit.


Shioya Saki Light, Iwaki, Fukushima,Japan, February 2024
Instagram photo by mayuyako712

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. Since the addition of the Hainan page in February 2009 listings 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 ibiblio.org, one of the largest free information databases online, maintained as a public service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Xià Yǔ Light, Tàizhōu Islands, Tàizhōu, Zhèjiāng, China, September 2007
unattributed photo from a former blog by Bìshān Yúnsǒu

Definitions: What is a lighthouse?
To begin with some basics, an aid to navigation or navaid 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.

Everyone agrees that a lighthouse is a lightbeacon that is, in some sense, a substantial building. There is some diagreement among lighthouse fans as to whether there should be restrictions on the design of the building, but standard dictionaries in English all have some form of this simple definition: "A lighthouse is a tower carrying a light to guide mariners." Indeed, in many languages the word for a lighthouse translates literally as "light tower" or "fire tower." The Directory adopts this definition: a lighthouse is a tower, at least 4 m (13 ft) tall and more substantial in cross section than a post, mast, or pillar, carrying or designed originally to carry a light to guide mariners.

Many lighthouses are enclosed buildings with walls of stone, brick, wood, concrete, metal, or modern composite materials. Many others are open skeletal (framework) towers of cast iron, steel, or wood. The light at the top of some lighthouses is housed in an enclosed lantern, but many lighthouses have the light exposed with no lantern. Historically lighthouses were powered with a variety of fuels, but today nearly all are solar powered.

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 the hashtag #.

A light station is a collection of buildings including a lighthouse, staff quarters, and supporting structures such as a fog signal building housing a foghorn or fogbell, a boathouse, an oil house to store fuel for the light, and so on. A century ago all lighthouses required lightkeepers to maintain and operate the light, fog signal, and other equipment. Today practically all aids to navigation operate automatically, but some light stations have resident caretakers, still called keepers, to maintain the property and guard against vandalism.


Oinake Light, Jayapura Regency, Papua, Indonesia, November 2019
Google Maps photo by Suripto Tigalima

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 (colors and flash patterns) of lights comes mostly from the U.S. Coast Guard Light List for U.S. lighthouses and from the U.S. NGA List of Lights or available national light lists 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 tower heights of the lighthouses 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.


Hupo Light, Hupo, North Gyeongsang, South Korea, February 2026
Google Maps photo by SungKun Lee


Skansin Light, Tórshavn, Faros, August 2022
Instagram photo
by Jesús Gómez

Articles about lighthouses:

Online Light Lists

Online Navigation Charts

Special Resources


Hohe Weg Light, Außenweser, Bremerhaven, Germany, June 2024
Google Maps photo by Chris Ahnert


Högby Light, Högby, Ölund, Kalmar, Sweden, June 2021
Instagram photo
by Migge GP


Cape Recife Light, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa, February 2024
Instagram photo by Nicholas Harris


Punta Carena Light, Capri, Napoli, Campania, Italy, March 2025
photo copyright Capt. Peter Mosselberger; used by permission

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, and has a large collection of historic light lists of U.S. lighthouses.

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


Song Tử Tây Light, North Danger Reef, Spratly Islands, May 2015
Google Maps photo by Dao Ngoc


Point Atkinson Light, West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 2023
Instagram photo
by Artur Osmokiesku

Île Juan de Nova Light, French Southern and Antarctic Lands, October 2010
Sea-Seek.com photo by Joëlle


Zwiebelturm, Bremerhaven, Germany, February 2019
Instagram photo by viaggiodichiara


Kapelludden Light, Borgholm, Ölund, Kalmar, Sweden, June 2024
Google Maps photo
fby Claudi Pikas


Cape Hermes Light, Port St. Johns, Eastern Cape, South Africa, December 2021
Instagram photo by Road Trip SA


Capo Palinuro Light, Palinuro, Campanai, Italy, July 2025
Google Maps photo by Andrea Benzo


Uno O Saki Light, Sōma, Fukushima, Japan, December 2025
Google Maps photo by Suga Koutaro

Lighthouses of the Americas

Northeastern United States

Southeastern United States and U.S. Caribbean

Midwestern United States

Western United States and U.S. Pacific Territories

Atlantic Canada and St. Pierre

Interior and Western Canada

Bermuda and the West Indies

Mexico

Central America

South America, Antarctica, South Atlantic Ocean

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

New Zealand and Pacific Islands

Australia

Indian Ocean

Africa

Lighthouses of Europe

Britain and Ireland

France and Monaco

Spain and Portugal

Italy and Malta

Southeastern Europe

Southwestern Russia and Ukraine

Belgium and Netherlands

Germany

Inland Central Europe

Denmark, Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland

Norway (listed south to north)

Sweden (listed south to north)

Poland and the Baltic States

Finland

Northwestern Russia (listed southwest to northeast)

Lighthouses of Asia

Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and Caspian Sea

Arabia, Iran and Pakistan

India

Southeast Asia

Philippines

Indonesia

China and Taiwan

Korea (listed clockwise around the peninsula)

Japan (listed clockwise around the main islands)

Asiatic Russia


Brockton Point Light, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, October 2023
Instagram photo by León Carax

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 recognize the late Michel Forand for his suggestions and corrections touching essentially every page of this work, and extend thanks to Jeremy D'Entremont, Ted Sarah, Klaus Huelse, and Andreas Köhler, who have followed the development of the Directory for years. More recently Jim Smith has read nearly every page carefully, correcting errors and suggesting useful additions. Each of them has contributed information and support in vital ways, and the Directory would be much less useful without their participation.

In addition to Michel Forand, I want to recognize the contributions of two other experts on lighthouse history who have passed in recent years: Terry Pepper, the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association (GLLKA), and Tim Harrison, the founding editor of Lighthouse Digest magazine. Both made useful and supportive comments on the Directory.

Formalities

Written by:

Russ Rowlett, Retired Adjunct Professor of Mathematics and Professor of 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 2026 by Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many 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. Everyone has permission to link to this page or to any page of the Directory.

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.