Much of Thomas Point’s early history remains buried under sand and water along its ever-eroding shoreline, but evidence shows that Native Americans harvested and feasted on the Bay’s seafood there sometime between 200 AD and 1500 AD, leaving large shell middens behind. The first known white settler was English merchant Philip Thomas, who held land along Anne Arundel Bay, including a 165-acre tract granted between 1658 and 1668 called Fuller Point that later became Thomas Point. After Thomas died in 1675 and was buried at the Old Quaker Burial Ground in Galesville, his children divided the estate, and ownership changed several times until 1824, when the U.S. government paid $529 for a 7-acre parcel to build a lighthouse. Private interests later bought back what remained of that parcel in 1914, and in 1917 Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Lee and Mr. and Mrs. Ridgley P. Melvin sold 72 acres, now Thomas Point Park and the community of Oakwood, to the Thomas Point Duck Club. The club used the property for duck hunting, with corn apparently grown to attract ducks, and its hunting lodge, a small log cabin that now serves as the park office and ranger’s residence, still stands, along with the club’s original manor house and outbuildings in Oakwood; names of some prominent club members are carved into the frame of the cabin’s 8-foot fireplace. After 30 years the duck club sold the property in 1947 to Ferdinand C. and Jane Homer Lee, who between 1960 and 1963 deeded their 44 acres to Anne Arundel County in four parcels for $5.00 each on the condition that the land be used for recreation and conservation. Offshore, the Thomas Point Lighthouse has guided boaters past the dangerous Thomas Point shoal since 1874. It is the third lighthouse built there, after the first entered service in 1825 on land that later eroded away and a replacement was built in 1838. The present lighthouse, about one mile off the end of the point, is a white hexagonal structure with keeper’s quarters, anchored by iron pilings screwed into the Chesapeake Bay bottom; its lantern shows a 6,000-candlepower white light visible up to 12 miles and a 1,300-candlepower red light visible about 9 miles, and it also has a foghorn for low visibility. A keeper staffed the lighthouse until the mid-1980 when it was automated with a generator and batteries.