The East Point Lighthouse guards the eastern shore of the Maurice River Cove and once provided hundreds of Delaware Bay oyster schooners with a guiding light to the ports at Port Norris and Port Elizabeth. Constructed in 1849, it is the second oldest lighthouse still standing in New Jersey, older only than the Sandy Hook lighthouse on the North Jersey shore. After nearly a century of service for commercial oyster fishing operations, East Point was deactivated in 1941. Local pressure convinced the Coast Guard to reactivate it in 1980, making it the only functioning onshore lighthouse on the Delaware Bay. The Cape Cod design used at East Point also influenced eight of the first nine lighthouses built on America’s west coast in the late 1800s.