Lighting the Way

Built in 1764, the Sandy Hook Lighthouse helped protect New York shipping as ships entered New York Harbor through a natural channel close to the Sandy Hook shore, where sandbars posed a constant danger. It remains part of the navigational system guiding ships through the harbor. In its early years, the tower was lighted by whale oil lamps and mirrors reflecting the lamps' light, later changed to kerosene, and electrified in the 1920s. In 1857, the mirrors were replaced with the Fresnel lens still in use today, whose glass prisms magnify the light into a powerful beam visible for 19 miles on a clear night. Among the first lights built in America, it is today the nation's oldest lighthouse tower. Shifting sand shoals off the New Jersey coast were a constant hazard, and longshore current along this shore drove sand northward; although the lighthouse originally stood 500 feet from the tip of Sandy Hook, today it is 1.5 miles to the tip and the lighthouse is landlocked.

New Jersey · United States