A Month of Lighthouse News:
- March 9. In Spain the government is acting to stop a proposal to open a restaurant in the Cape Trafalgar Lighthouse northwest of Gibraltar, and instead to protect the lighthouse as a national monument.
- March 7. Federal job cuts laid off 3 interpretive rangers at the very popular Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Oregon, leaving only one educational specialist on duty. Park hours have been reduced and tours of the lighthouse have been suspended.
- March 5. In South Carolina crews are four months into a $3.2 million restoration of the Hunting Island Lighthouse, and on schedule to complete the work by the end of 2025. Closed two years ago as unsafe, the lighthouse should reopen in 2026.
- March 4. Fixed: Trinity House technicians have finally silenced the out-of-control fog horn of the Longships Lighthouse off England's Lands End, Cornwall. For several weeks the horn had been sounding every 13 seconds, day and night.
- March 4. Volunteers are planning celebrations this summer of the 150th anniversary of the West Point Lighthouse in Prince Edward Island, Canada.
- March 2. The General Services Administration lists the 1910 Reedy Island Range Rear Lighthouse in Delaware as excess property for disposal by the Coast Guard, but no auction sale was announced.
- February 28. In Ireland residents are protesting plans by the Commissioners of Irish Lights to replace the rotating Fresnel lens of the St. Johns Point Lighthouse with an LED system. The Commissioners want to remove the mercury on which the lens rotates.
- February 28. The Longships Lighthouse stands on a reef just off Land's End, Cornwall, the southwestern tip of England. For more than a week the fog horn of the lighthouse has been sounding every 13 seconds, day and night. Trinity House is waiting for a part needed for repairs.
- February 26. Work is underway on a $16 million shoreline erosion control project near and around the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse in Florida.
- February 26. The McCrae Lighthouse near Melbourne, Australia, will be illuminated Friday in honor of Rare Disease Day, this year spotlighting the muscle disease myositis.
- February 25. Michigan contractor Jonathan Coffer and his team will travel to Alaska this summer to repaint the 1905 Eldred Rock Lighthouse near Haines, the oldest surviving Alaska lighthouse.
- February 21. In Cartagena, eastern Spain, the 1865 Cabo de Palos Lighthouse, one of Spain's tallest and best known, has been named a National Site of Cultural Interest.
- February 20. On Long Island, New York, the Huntington Lighthouse Preservation Society cancels its annual musicfest to concentrate on restoration, including new windows and repairs to the roof, iron railings, and masonry.
- February 19. Maritime Museum Louisiana has launched a drive to raise $2 million for restoration of the Tchefuncte River Lighthouse in Madisonville. This is in addition to ongoing shoreline modifications to protect the tower from rising water levels in Lake Pontchartrain.
- February 18. The Borden Flats Lighthouse in Mount Hope Bay, southern Massachusetts, is on sale for $1.1 million. This lighthouse is fully restored and furnished and has operated as a B&B for more than a decade.
- February 16. A celebration yesterday marked the 150th anniversary of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse in California.
- February 13. In Hawaii the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge will be closed February 17 through April 30 for repairs to roads and parking areas. This will block access to the Kilauea Point Lighthouse, one of Hawaii's best known and most visited lighthouses.
Tugela Bluff Light, Mandini, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, July 2022
Google Maps photo by Annaleze Lindeque
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.
Old Point Loma Light, San Diego, California, U.S.A., January 2025
Instagram photo by Mindy Kirby
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.
Île du Moine Range Front Light, Sorel, Quebec, Canada, October 2023
photo copyright Michael Boucher; used by permission
La Caravelle Light, Presque-île de la Caravelle. Martinique, December 2022
Google Maps photo by Laurent
Articles about lighthouses:
- The Oldest U.S. Towers, 1764-1791
- Early Federal Octagonals, 1792-1817
- 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
Wilson's Promontory Light, Victoria, Australia, May 2023
Instagram photo by Todd Palmer
Xià Yǔ Light, Tàizhōu Islands, Tàizhōu, Zhèjiāng, China, September 2007
unattributed photo from a former blog by Bìshān Yúnsǒu
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.
Barroui Light, Barroui, Dominica, February 2018
photo copyright Capt. Peter Mosselberger; used by permission
Ölands Norre Udde Light (Långe Erik), Byxelkrok, Öland, Sweden, June 2023
Instagram photo by Polly & Penny
Cooper Light, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, July 2024
Google Maps photo by Ockert Pretorius
Vieste Light, Vieste, Puglia, Italy, July 2023
Instagram photo by Wilma Mattivi
Angel's Gate Light, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., August 2023
Instagram photo by Dianne Gowder
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
