Life at the Cape Hatteras Light Station was not lonely for the lighthouse keepers and their families, but lively and social, with village residents frequently visiting, especially on Sunday afternoons and summer evenings. Swimming, baseball, croquet, chasing wild horses and penning them in the yards to be broken to the saddle, and climbing the lighthouse were all part of daily life. Two residences served the keepers and their families: the larger Double Keeper's Quarters, built in 1854 for the staff of the first lighthouse and now used as Cape Hatteras National Seashore's Hatteras Island Visitor Center, and the smaller Principal Keeper Quarters, built in 1871 from materials left over from the present-day lighthouse for the head keeper and his family.