Before electricity, batteries, or solar panels, lamplight was generated by oil, and a light bright enough to be seen from seventeen miles away required six hundred sixty gallons of oil. At Hunting Island Lighthouse, this oil was stored in an oil house constructed when the lighthouse was erected at this location in 1889. Its solid brick walls and floors provided fireproof storage. Oil was delivered to the island once a month, and once a day the keeper carried it up the tower's 167 steps. Built purely for utility, the oil house had changed little by about 1950, and the 1889 Outfit List for Light Stations inventoried items kept there, including brass funnels and five-gallon cans.