A Month of Lighthouse News:.
- 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.
- July 28. The Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, has reopened the Drum Point Lighthouse, closed since May 4 for repainting and some minor repairs. The 1883 Drum Point Light is a cottage screw pile lighthouse relocated to the museum in 1975.
- July 28. The 150th birthday of the 1876 Tawas Point Lighthouse in Michigan will be celebrated in a public party on National Lighthouse Day, August 7. The usual admission fee will be waived for the event.
- July 25. The Alabama Lighthouse Association has begun a $1.2 million restoration of the Middle Bay Lighthouse near Mobile. Work will include a new roof, replacing the deck, wood repairs, and painting.
- July 25. The Dunkirk Lighthouse in western New York could be threatened by erosion of the bluff on which it stands. Managers are seeking a $50,000 grant to support an engineering study of possible solutions to the problem.
- July 24. The Heceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon was relit last night after being out of service for five months. The repairs included replacing the carriage wheels that rotate the giant Fresnel lens.
- July 24. The Cabo da Roca Lighthouse in Portugal has reopened to visitors following a €1.6 million restoration. Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point of the European continent.
- July 23. https: Lake Eries Lights, in Pennsylvania, will hold its annual fundraiser, Motown Night at the Light, at the Presque Isle Lighthouse on August 1. Proceeds from the event will help raise the $500,000 needed to restore the Erie Harbor Pierhead Lighthouse.
- July 22. The Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse in Delaware needs to move from its crumbling breakwater and officials in Lewes are considering possible locations, including the site of the former Green Hill Lighthouse (moved to Florida in 1921) and Cape Henlopen State Park.
- July 15. The rotating first order Fresnel lens from the Pendeen Lighthouse near Land's End in southwest England is now on permanent loan to the Korean National Lighthouse Museum at Homigot in Pohang, South Korea.
- July 15. The National Park Service has closed the Rock Harbor Lighthouse in Isle Royale National Park, Michigan, while crews fight to contain a nearby wildfire. Campgrounds in the area are also closed.
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.
Cloch Point Light, Inverclyde, Scotland, U.K., July 2021
ex-Instagram photo by Karolina Fiebig-Cargill
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.
Skagen Light, Skagen, Nordjylland, Denmark, August 2023
Instagram photo by
Marcus Diemer
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.
Pointe de l'Espiguette Light, Grau-du-Roi, Gard, France, May 2026
Google Maps photo by Fatima Vildeuil
Tanjung Dungun Light, Dungun, Terengganu, Malaysia, March 2022
Google Maps photo by William Goh
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
Cape Ray Light, Channel-Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland, Canada, September 2025
Google Maps photo by Josee Desgens
West Chop Light, Vineyard Haven, Maqssachusetts, U.S.A., July 2022
Instagram photo by Colleen Spelman
La Puntilla Light, Porlamar, Nueva Esparta, Venezuela, December 2023
Google Maps photo by John Atehortua
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.
Guvlymayak Light, Guvlymayak, Turkmenistan, August 2023
Google Maps photo by Tazemyrat Toyliyew
Guia Light, Macau, China, June 2023
Google Maps photo by Idlers
Ponta Biombo Light, Biombo, Guinea-Bissau, April 2022
Facebook photo by Martin Paul Evison
Waglan Island Light, Hong Kong, China, February 2021
Google Maps photo by Kit Kuen Cao
Mull of Galloway Light, Drummore, Scotland, U.K. August 2022
Google Maps photo by Lisa Stevens
Môle St.-Louis Light, Sète, Hérault, France, April 2024
Google Maps photo by Jean-Claude Becqueriaux
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
Southeast Asia
Philippines
Indonesia
China and Taiwan
Korea (listed clockwise around the peninsula)
Japan (listed clockwise around the main islands)
Asiatic Russia
