The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, providing information and links for more than 24,600 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 17, 2025.

This week the pages for Southeastern England in the U.K., Northeast Jylland in Denmark, Ghana, Northern Sardenia in Italy, Eastern Thailand, Southern Nova Scotia in Canada, the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, Østfold County in Norway, Southern Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan, Lebanon, Syria, the Shàntóu Area of Guǎngdōng Province in China, Bintan and Lingga in Riau Islands Province in Indonesia, the Northern White Sea coast of Murmansk Oblast in Russia, and Sacheon City in South Korea have been checked and revised with improved information and many new photos.

The Directory's pages for Ukraine describe the lighthouses as they existed before the start of the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia. No changes in the descriptions will be made until there is a stable agreement that stops the fighting. Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, including Crimea, are identified provisionally as East Ukraine.

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 Bill Edwards and Alexander Trabas for their comments and to Jim Smith for his careful review of last week's revisions.

GOOGLE SITE SEARCH (of ibiblio.org) 

 


Old and new Dézhōudǎo Lights, Shàntóu, Guǎngdōng, China, June 2019
Sohu.com photo

A Month of Lighthouse News:

  • May 18. In Stratford, Connecticut, Mayor Laura Hoydick confirms that the town has applied to own the 1881 Stratford Point Lighthouse through the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act.
  • May 18. At the Strathy Point Lighthouse on the north coast of Scotland a one-bedroom keeper's cottage, now restored as a studio apartment, is for sale for £75,000.
  • May 17. At the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse in Wisconsin replicas of the station's barn and summer kitchen are under construction while the interior of the lighthouse is restored and repainted.
  • May 16. A snag in restoration of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina: repairing cracks in 16 huge brackets that support the lantern and gallery may require extra time and additional funding.
  • May 16. A graveside ceremony in Newport, Rhode Island, Saturday, May 24, will honor Ida Lewis, the heroic female keeper of the Lime Rock Lighthouse for 50 years, credited with saving at least 18 lives.
  • May 15. With the help of local contractors and volunteers a temporary dock is in place at the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse in New York, replacing a dock destroyed in a barge collision with the lighthouse. The dock allows ongoing restoration work at the lighthouse to resume.
  • May 15. Work begins next week to repair the walkway at the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde, Maine. The lighthouse and walkway (famous from the movie Forrest Gump) were damaged by a severe storm in January 2024.
  • May 15. The Canadian Coast Guard and a federal workers' agency are investigating after an on-duty lighthouse keeper died in April, alone, at the Triple Island Lighthouse off Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
  • May 14. Following a $2.9 million restoration by New York State Parks the 1829 Barcelona Lighthouse at the far western end of the state will be open for climbing -- for the first time -- every day from Memorial Day weekend through September 1.
  • May 14. Winter winds blew an unusual amount of sand covering the access road to the Big Sable Point Lighthouse in Michigan and it took state parks crews five days to reopen the road.
  • May 13. The Interior Department has announced that the Friends of Nobska Light have been chosen (as expected) to receive ownership of the Nobska Lighthouse in Woods Hole, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Friends group has supported and managed the lighthouse since 2014.
  • May 11. In Alaska the Eldred Rock Lighthouse Preservation Organization is signing up volunteers for another six-week restoration project at the 1905 lighthouse, Alaska's oldest. The hope is to have the lighthouse in shape to open to the public in summer 2026.
  • May 11. Florida State Parks has given its Long Project-Historical award to a team of rangers and volunteers from Friends of Cape Florida for their work replacing the lantern room window glass at the Cape Florida Lighthouse near Miami.
  • May 10. In Michigan the Charlevoix Historical Society receives one of seven Governor’s Awards for Historic Preservation recognizing its work restoring and managing the Charlevoix South Pier Lighthouse.
  • May 8. The 1830 Point Lookout Lighthouse in Maryland will be open Thursdays through Mondays starting May 15 and throughout the summer. The lighthouse has been closed for seven years for a complete restoration and development of museum exhibits inside the building.
  • May 6. Archaeologists have discovered the foundation ruins of a previously unknown Roman lighthouse near Tobruk in eastern Libya.
  • May 6. The owner of the 1881 Isle La Motte Lighthouse on Lake Champlain, Vermont, wants to keep the tower that carried the light from 1933 to 2002, but the Coast Guard has awarded a contract to remove it. (The 1881 lighthouse is safe.)
  • May 3. Preservation Virginia is making repairs around the doorway of he Old Cape Henry Lighthouse, using stone from the same Northern Virginia quarry that supplied the original stone for the lighthouse in the 1790s.
  • May 2. The damage to the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse in New York Tuesday was caused by a tugboat pushing several barges, one of which struck the lighthouse. The tug company accepts responsibility and will assist in repairs. Meanwhile the sheriff has opened an investigation.
  • May 2. The Port Boca Grande Lighthouse in Florida will reopen Monday, May 5. It's been closed eight months to repair hurricane damage.
  • May 1. Tuesday night an unknown vessel collided with the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse in New York's Hudson River, heavily damaging the lighthouse's dock and collapsing the stairway. Damage is estimated at $250,000.
  • April 30. This summer the Wisconsin Maritime Museum will offer guided tours of the 1918 Manitowoc Breakwater Lighthouse in Manitowoc on selected Saturdays. Previously the local Rotary Club had offered occasional tours. The lighthouse is privately owned.
  • April 30. In Michigan St. Joseph City Commissioners have approved an agreement with St. Joseph Today to manage tours of the St. Joseph Pierhead Lighthouses. Previously these tours were organized by the local Heritage Museum.
  • April 28. In Michigan the Sable Point Lighthouse Keepers Association is seeking volunteer one-week keepers to staff the 1876 White River Lighthouse during the summer season.
  • April 24. The Stratford Point Lighthouse in Connecticut has been listed for transfer to a nonprofit or governmental owner through the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. It's likely the Town of Stratford will be interested in owning this very accessible lighthouse.
  • April 22. The Point Lookout Lighthouse in Maryland has been rededicated after seven years and $5 million invested by the state in restoring the building and developing exhibits. The lighthouse will open for tours next month, schedule to be announced.
  • April 20. The Braddock Point Lighthouse on Lake Ontario west of Rochester, New York, is for sale for $1.495 million. This lighthouse was deactivated officially in 1954 but has been a private aid to navigation since 1996.
  • April 20. The Two Harbors Lighthouse in Minnesota will be able to open its B&B for the season in May while continuing to raise funds needed to repair damage from a boiler failure during frigid winter weather.


Old and new Pulau Tekulai Lights, Bintan, Riau Islands, Indonesia, February 2020
Google Msps photo by Maliki _Malik

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.


Kashkarantsy Light, Kashkarantsy, Murmansk, Russia, August 2024
Google Maps photo by Irina Blokhina

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.


Bamam Light, Sacheon, outh Gyeongsang, South Korea, January 2025
Masan MOF photo

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.


North Foreland Light, Broadstairs and St. Peter's, Kent, England, U.K., February 2024
Instagram photo
by James Hollands


1858 Skagen Light, Skagen, Nordjylland, Denmark, August 2023
Instagram photo
by Marcus Diemer

Articles about lighthouses:

Online Light Lists

Online Navigation Charts

Special Resources


Accra (Jamestown) Light, Accra, Ghana, January 2024
Instagram photo by Chrissykris Travel & Tour Consult


Porto Torres Light, Porto Torres, Sassari, Sardinia, Italy, July 2017
Google Maps street view


Rayong Light, Rayong, Thailand, June 2024
Google Maps street view


Cape Sable Light, Clark's Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada, April 2021
Instagram photo by Bruce Bishop

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.


Bragmans Bluff Light, Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, November 2023
Google Maps photo by Roland Angerer


Torbjørnskjær Light, Hvaler, Østfold, Norway, June 2021
Google Maps photo by Mats Karlsøen

Ōno Light, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan, June 2022
Google Maps photo by kawin


Manara Lighthouse, Beirut, Lebanon, November 2021
Instagram photo by tarek477


Outbound Leading Light, Puerto Moín, Costa Rica, January 2019
Google Maps drone view by Alfredo Gallegos Jimenez


Latakia Range Rear Light, Latakia, Syria, January 2018
Google Maps photo by Bashar Saleh


Old and new Struten Lights, Fredrikstad, Østfold, Norway, July 2024
Google Maps photo by Alex Kurtz

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


Cape Forchu Light, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, May 2023
Instagram photo by Cape Forchu

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 2024 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.