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Lighthouse History
Built: 1st lighthouse 1801
/ 2nd lighthouse 1811
Type: 1st ligthouse Pyramidal
Wooden Tower / 2nd lighthouse Brick Tower
Height: 1st lighthouse 72
feet / 2nd lighthouse 87 feet
Status: 1st lighthouse destroyed
1806 / 2nd lighthouse Active
Location: Georgetown
Lens: 1st lighthouse Whale
Oil / 2nd lighthouse Fourth Order Fresnel & Automated in 1986
Keepers: US Coast Guard
Notes: In 1789, Revolutionary
War Patriot Paul Trapier donated a tract of land on North Island for the
establishment of the Georgetown Lighthouse. However, the newly formed Lighthouse
Service did not take immediate advantage of the offer, and another decade
passed before construction began on the Georgetown Lighthouse.
The seventy-two-foot, pyramidal
tower, constructed of Cypress wood, was finished in the early part of 1801,
during the final days of John Adams' presidency. Besides the tower, a two-story
keeper's dwelling was built along with a tank for holding the whale oil
that fueled the lighthouse's lamp. The wooden tower's life was cut short
by a violent storm in 1806.
Several years passed before
a replacement structure was built. A marble plaque positioned above the
door records the names of those who undertook the work on the tower and
records the year of its erection as 1811. This time the seventy-two-foot
tower was constructed of brick, greatly reducing the chance that a big,
bad gale would blow the lighthouse down. The staircase that spirals upwards
inside the stout brick tower is made of stone. In 1857, the tower was modified
to display a fourth-order Fresnel lens.
When the Civil War broke
out, the Confederates used the Georgetown Lighthouse as a lookout station,
until Union forces captured it in May of 1862. The lighthouse was heavily
damaged during the North-South conflict, and as part of the post-war repair
work, the tower was heightened to eighty-seven feet. |