The Tallest Lighthouse In The Nation

I did a post about lighthouses and it made me wonder about the tallest one. Well, here it is, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.




Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the tallest in the nation and famous symbol of North Carolina. The lighthouse site houses a visitors center that is open throughout the year and houses displays on the island's maritime history. The beacon from the light can be seen some 20-miles out to sea and has warned sailors for more than 100 years of the treacherous Diamond Shoals, the shallow sandbars which extend some 14 miles out into the ocean off Cape Hatteras.

It was built with 1,250,000 bricks baked in kilns along the James River in Virginia and brought in scows into Cape Creek where it was hauled by oxen one mile to the building site in Buxton. Its walls at the base are 14 feet of solid masonry and narrow to eight feet at the top. Weighing 6,250 tons, the lighthouse was built with no pilings under it - just a foundation built of heart pine. Towering 196 feet from the base to the top brick and then topped with an iron superstructure it become the tallest brick lighthouse on the American coast at 208 feet and at a cost of $155,000.00.