A Month of Lighthouse News:.
- August 28. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore has awarded a $167,400 contract for the deconstruction of the historic Chequamegon Point Lighthouse in Wisconsin. The parts of the tower will be stored for preservation and later reassembly at a site not yet named.
- August 27. A bizarre incident at the Nubble Lighthouse in York, Maine: A man experiencing what police described as a “mental health crisis” swam across to the island and broke one of the windows of the keeper's house. A rescue team and police officers took the man into custody.
- August 24. Located off the west coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Henry Island and its 1902 lighthouse have been for sale since 2024 for nearly $7 million. Owner William Baker and his wife have owned the island since 1991 and want to sell to someone who will preserve it.
- August 24. A successful fish fry on a rainy day raises funds for continued restoration of the 1905 Ashtabula Harbor Lighthouse in northeastern Ohio.
- August 22. The Old Cape Henry Lighthouse in Virginia, located on a military base and closed to civilians since February, has reopened to guided tours. Non-military visitors must register 5-30 days in advance and are subject to background checks.
- August 21. A restoration of the gallery and lantern room of the Biloxi Lighthouse in Mississippi is underway. Much of this work represents an upgrade to the more hurried restoration carried out to repair damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
- August 21. In October the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon will begin a preservation project at the Heceta Head Lighthouse keeper’s house, replacing the entire roof and the front porch. During the season the house is operated as a bed and breakfast inn.
- August 20. Residents in Saugreen Shores, Ontario, are mobilizing to save the deteriorating McNab Point Lighthouse. Town leaders and the property owners who control access to the lighthouse are cooperating and a plan could come together this fall.
- August 19. The Coast Guard has installed a new LED optic at the Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse in South Portland, Maine.
- August 18. Here is a thorough report on the $16 million restoration of the Pigeon Point Lighthouse in California, now entering its final phases as new cast iron to support the gallery is installed. The Fresnel lens is to be returned to the lantern in October.
- August 18. Residents in Chatham on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, are complaining about the new LED optic at the Chatham Lighthouse. They want the light to sweep over near shore waters and the beaches like the former aerobeacon light.
- August 16. The state of Gujarat in western India has completed development of tourist facilities at 17 of its lighthouses including new lighthouse museums at the Gopnath Point Lighthouse and Dwarka Point Lighthouse. Gujarat has the longest coast of any Indian state.
- August 15. The Point Prim Lighthouse in Prince Edward Island, Canada, a popular tourist attraction, is undergoing a "makeover." The shingles that cover the tower are being replaced.
- August 15. In Australia the recently restored foghorn of the Point Lonsdale Lighthouse near Melbourne will be sounded tomorrow as part of the celebration of International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend.
- August 14. ICC Commonwealth is completing a $1 million restoration project at the Currituck Beach Lighthouse on North Carolina's Outer Banks. The work includes repointing brickwork and rust abatement on the iron fittings. The red brick tower is not painted.
- August 14. Tours have resumed at the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse in New Hampshire. Tours were suspended in 2024 when storm damage around the lighthouse prevented visitors from accessing the tower safely. The new access system includes three new staircases.
- August 14. Meanwhile in Connecticut damage from a severe storm has closed Lighthouse Point Park in New Haven "for the foreseeable future" blocking access to the Five Mile PoInt Lighthouse. A popular carousel was damaged and many trees felled by the storm.
- August 13. At their annual benefit the Friends of Acadia in Maine raised $400,000 for restoration of the Baker Island Lighthouse. The 1855 lighthouse, owned by the National Park Service, is in increasingly poor condition and is on the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List.
- August 13. The privately owned Kevich Lighthouse in Wisconsin is for sale for $1.28 million, including the attached home and more than 3 acres of spectacular lakefront property. This is a bargain! The 1981 lighthouse is an official light, one of the highest in the Great Lakes.
- August 12. The Coast Guard has begun a restoration project at the 1917 Diamond Head Lighthouse in Honolulu, Hawaii. The project will address "repairing aging concrete and replacing railings, decks, ladders, windows and frames." It should be completed in Spring 2027.
- August 11. In Estonia the Mehikoorma Lighthouse has reopened to visitors after a restoration. The lighthouse is on a strait connecting Lakes Lämmi and Pihkva on Estonia's eastern border with Russia, giving visitors a chance for a long view into Russian territory.
- August 7. A new group, the Cleveland Light Keepers Collective, is one of six groups applying to own the Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse in Ohio under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act.
- August 4. Two defendants have pled guilty to setting the fire that caused $100,000 in damage to the Tarrytown Lighthouse in New York in May 2025. They can avoid jail by repaying the $100,000 immediately and doing community service.
- August 4. Ownership of the historic Boston Lighthouse in Massachusetts is being offered to qualified organizations under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. The lighthouse is in a National Recreation Area so the National Park Service is the obvious candidate for the new owner.
- August 1. In Ontario the Municipality of Bayham has handed ownership of the Port Burwell Lighthouse to the Bayham Historical Society. The 1840 lighthouse, one of Canada's oldest wood lighthouses, is in urgent need of restoration. The Society plans to move quickly to seek funding.
- July 31. In York, Maine, the Nubble Lighthouse (officially, Cape Neddick Light) is being repainted this summer in preparation for its 150th birthday celebration in 2029.
- july 30. The original lantern will be returned shortly to the Cedar Island Lighthouse in eastern Long Island, New York. The 1868 lighthouse is in the midst of a $4 million restoration funded by Suffolk County.
- July 29. The Northern Lighthouse Board has announced plans for a major restoration of the 1895 Sule Skerry Lighthouse. Sule Skerry is the most remote of all British light stations, located on a small island 65 km (40 mi) west of the Orkney islands northwest of Scotland.
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.
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.
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.
Haut-fond Prince Light, Tadoussac, Québec, Canada, August 2022
Google Maps photo by Mauro Caraboni
New London Harbor Light, New London, Connecticut, U.S.A., August 2023
Instagram photo by kristinalovephotography
Articles about lighthouses:
- The Oldest U.S. Towers, 1764-1791
- Early Federal Octagonals, 1792-1817O
- 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
Online Light Lists
Online Navigation Charts
Special Resources
- Checklist of Lightships of the World
- National Light Lists
- Bolivian Light List 2010
- Lighthouse Development in Mozambique, 1908-1931
- Lighthouses of the Khasan District, Russian Far East
- Malaysia List of Lights 2020
- Montenegro Light List 2013
- Northern Cyprus Light List
- Panama Canal Range Lights (pdf document, 652 kB)
- Papua New Guinea Light List
- The Tallest Lighthouses
- USGSA - Lighthouse Disposal List 2023
Güiria Light, Güiria, Sucre, Venezuela, September 2024
Google Maps photo by Félix Ruiz
1877 Sakai Lighthouse, Sakai, Ōsaka, Japan, September 2023
Instagram photo by takemaro_official
Gorodets Locks Upper Entrance South Light, Volga River, Russia, June 2021
Google Maps photo by Alena Romanicheva
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.
Ujung Batumandi Light, Padang,
West Sumatra, Indonesia, November 2024
Google Maps photo by Masril Rustam
Bamam Light, Sacheon, South Gyeongsang, South Korea, January 2025
Masan MOF photo
Butt of Lewis Light, Port of Ness, Western Isles, Scotland, U.K., March 2024
Instagram photo by andy_macp
Cap Blanc Light, Nouâdhibou, Mauritania, April 2022
Google Maps photo by Giulio Aprin
Barra Point Light, Fort Bullen, The Gambia, January 2026
Google Maps photo by Juan Barrera
Sa Mola Light, Formentera, Baleares, Spain, May 2022
Google Maps photo by Andrés Frontera
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, Arctic, and Western Canada
Bermuda and the West Indies
Mexico
Central America
South America
South Atlantic Ocean and Antarctica
Lighthouses
of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Australia, and Africa |
Pacific Islands
New Zealand
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
South and Southeast Asia
Philippines
Indonesia
China and Taiwan
Korea (listed clockwise around the peninsula)
Japan (listed clockwise around the main islands)
Asiatic Russia
