Brandywine Shoal Light stands in Delaware Bay marking a dangerous shoal off the New Jersey coast and is closely tied to major advances in American lighthouse engineering. After a lightship was stationed there from 1823 and early fixed-light plans failed, Major Hartman Bache and Lieutenant George Meade designed the nation’s first screw-pile lighthouse for the site, first lit in 1850. It was later strengthened against ice and in 1851 received one of the earliest Fresnel lenses used in the United States, helping prove that system’s superiority. A new caisson lighthouse replaced the aging structure in 1914, and the light remained staffed until automation in 1974.