Craighill Channel Lower Range Rear Light

Craighill Channel Lower Range Rear Light is a Maryland lighthouse that, with its companion front light, marks the first section of the shipping channel into Baltimore Harbor from the Chesapeake before the route turns into the Patapsco River. Built as part of efforts to improve access to the port, it belongs to waterways named for William Craighill after Congress funded enlargement of the harbor channel in 1870. Severe ice forced engineers to abandon an earlier screw-pile plan, and the rear light was instead completed in 1875 as a pyramidal iron tower on nine stone piers. Still in service, it is Maryland’s tallest lighthouse and a notable survivor of nineteenth-century harbor engineering.

Edgemere, Maryland · United States