Craney Island Light stood at the mouth of Virginia’s Elizabeth River, marking an important approach to Norfolk Harbor in a landscape long shaped by navigation and military use. Its history began in 1820 with a lightship placed off the island’s eastern side after an earlier site at Willoughby’s Shoal proved too exposed. That station became the first permanently stationed lightship in the United States, giving the site national importance in early navigational history. The lightship was replaced by screw-pile lighthouses in 1859 and 1884. The station lasted until 1936, then declined to an automated light and later a buoy, while its legacy endured through the lightship Portsmouth.

Portsmouth, Virginia · USA