Cape Lookout Lighthouse Facts

Year Built: 1859
Second Lighthouse in the location (first lasted from 1812-1859)
Still Active: Yes
Activated: November 1, 1859
Latitude: 34.6228     Longitude: -76.5245

Day Markings: Black and white diamond checkers
Type of Lamp: Two DCB-24 rotating airport beacons (back to back), each containing one 1000-watt light
Signal: Rotating flash that runs 24 hours a day
Light Signal Sequence: One flash every fifteen seconds
Height of Lighthouse: 163 feet
Height of Lighthouse above sea level: 169 feet
Focal Point Height Above Sea Level: 150 feet
Light Visibility: 18-19 nautical miles out to sea
Public accessibility: Visitors’ center open April through November; lighthouse closed to the public for safety reasons


Official Website: http://www.friendsofcapelookout.com/
Best Unofficial Website: http://www.outerbanksguidebook.com/lookout.htm

Introduction

The black and white, diamond-checkered Cape Lookout Lighthouse is the southernmost part of a Four-Part Series of lighthouses built by the former U.S. Lighthouse Service (which has since been absorbed into the U.S. Coast Guard). This series of lighthouses was built to guide shipsthrough North Carolina’s Outer Banks, an infamous part of the Atlantic coastline that has claimed thousands of ships and an untold number of lives over the centuries.  The lighthouses were positioned approximately 40 miles apart on the premise that as ships lost sight of one light, the next light would come into view, and that together the network of lighthouses would guide ships safely through the Outer Banks. The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is actually 70 miles from its closest sister lighthouse, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, so it breaks the intended pattern somewhat, but a smaller lighthouse called the Ocracoke Lighthouse stands between the two lighthouses and helps light the small stretch between the two lights. 

The most infamous part of the Outer Banks is the murderous Diamond Shoals, which has claimed thousands of ships and innumerable lives over the centuries.  The Diamond Shoals are positioned off of Cape Hatteras, where the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse stands.  But it is Cape Lookout that is painted with the Diamond Markings.  To add to the confusion, the Cape Lookout Lighthouse stands next to a ghost town that was named Diamond City, and local residents refer to the Cape Lookout Shoals, which the Cape Lookout Lighthouse watches over, as the Diamond Shoals.  There are rumors that Cape Lookout’s diamond markings were meant for the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and were added to the Cape Lookout light by mistake.  Are the rumors true?  Read on to find out…

The long, thin islands that make up Cape Lookout resemble a fishing line with a fishhook on the end being trailed by a fishing lure.  The “fishing lure” that runs east and west is called the Shackleford Banks.  The “fishing line” with the “fishhook” that runs northeast/southwest is called the Core Banks.  The actual “fishhook” is Cape Lookout, and the Cape Lookout Lighthouse sits at the top of the “fishhook”.  Today, a strait of water called Barden Inlet separates Core Banks (the “fishing line”) and Shackleford Banks (the “fishing lure”), but as little as 150 years ago, these two banks were grown together and were larger and broader than they are today. 

Underneath the water to the southeast of the Cape Lookout “fishhook” lies the Cape Lookout Shoals, an underwater sandbar that is itself shaped like a fishhook, only much larger and fatter than the island “fishhook” that is Cape Lookout.   The Cape Lookout Shoals have successfully caught many ships over the years, although it has not become quite as notorious a ship trap as Cape Hatteras’ Diamond Shoals or Cape Fear’s Frying Pan Shoals.  However, it has done enough damage that it too has earned a bad reputation with mariners, enough that an early map referred to Cape Lookout as Promontorium Tremendum (which translates from Latin as “Horrible Headland”). 

It was Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, who urged Congress to pass the Lighthouse Bill on August 7, 1789.  This was the ninth piece of legislation ever passed by the brand new Federal Government of the United States.  The bill successfully brought all the existing lighthouses of the time under the jurisdiction of the United States Treasury, established the U.S. Lighthouse Service (which would eventually be absorbed into the Coast Guard), and established plans to build a detailed lighthouse system throughout the U.S. coastline.  Of particular importance was the need to build lighthouses on the Outer Banks. 

When the United States government federalized the American lighthouse system, North Carolina had already begun work to light its only two harbors, those being Ocracoke Inlet and Cape Fear River.  Because the Outer Banks were sparsely populated, and lights to cover the Outer Banks’ shoals would only be for passing ships, the state did not see a pressing need to build lighthouses to cover them.  But with the Federal Government taking responsibility for the entire U.S. lighthouse system, the U.S. Lighthouse Service was quick to address the need for Outer Banks lighthouses.  Cape Hatteras was taken on first, with a location selected in 1791 and construction of the lighthouse commencing in 1799. Cape Lookout was taken on next.

In February 1805, the U.S. Treasury purchased four acres of land from Joseph Fulford and Elijah Piggot for building the first Cape Lookout Lighthouse. Information on when construction of the lighthouse began is now lost, but it was completed and began operating in 1812.  The first Cape Lookout Lighthouse stood 95 feet tall, and was visible for 16-18 miles. The lighthouse consisted of a brick interior tower inside a pyramid-like wooden exterior tower, which was painted with alternating white and red horizontal stripes. One authority from the period stated, “As it is approached[,] it resembles a ship under sail.”

As well intended as the first attempts at lighting the Outer Banks were, unforeseen problems caused them to be an embarrassing and costly failed attempt to do so.  The first problem with the Cape Lookout Lighthouse was that it is located in an area where the warm Gulf Stream and the cold Labrador Current collide. This often causes a thick fog to shroud the Outer Banks, and the original light was not tall enough to see over it or pierce through it.  Many ship captains found it easier to navigate with their instruments and ignore the Cape Lookout Lighthouse altogether, claiming that a ship was more likely to run into the shoals looking for the lighthouse.  Added to the problem was a not-so-well-designed lighting system, as well as flaws in the integrity of the construction of the lighthouse itself.  In short, Cape Lookout would soon be in need of a new lighthouse.

After conducting a thorough survey on the condition of the American lighthouse system in 1851, the Lighthouse Service decided to upgrade many of the lighthouses in the system.  Having learned from their previous mistakes, the Lighthouse Service went to great trouble and expense to build a series of four tall, bright, easy-to-recognize sentinels to effectively guide ships through the Outer Banks.  Cape Lookout was the first of the four to be built.

The U.S. Treasury hired William H. C. Whiting of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to supervise the designing and building of the second Cape Lookout Lighthouse in 1858.  The blueprints for the lighthouse were completed that same year, and the building was completed in 1859.  The new lighthouse was fitted with a first-order Fresnel lens, which at the time was a state-of-the-art lighting system that the United States was late in adapting, but which had become the standard in Europe.  The new improved Cape Lookout Lighthouse was lit on November 1, 1859.  Meanwhile, the original lighthouse building remained standing until the late 1800’s.  Some remaining rubble from the first lighthouse still exists a few hundred feet north of the current lighthouse.

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse’s first contact with war took place during the Civil War two years after it was built.  In 1861, Union troops took over the Confederate fortresses built on the Outer Banks.  The Confederates decided it would be best the keep the Outer Banks Lighthouses from aiding the Union’s efforts, so the Cape Lookout Lighthouse was rigged with explosives in an attempt to blow it apart.  However, the operation did little more than cause fire damage to the stairs and some damage to the lens and lamphouse. 

With the Cape Lookout Lighthouse having withstood the ultimate test of resilience, the Lighthouse Board decided to use the Cape Lookout Lighthouse as the prototype for the other Outer Banks lighthouses, all three of which would be built after the Civil War.  The next to be built was the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 1870, followed by the Bodie Island Lighthouse in 1872 and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in 1875. A number of design flaws that the Cape Lookout Lighthouse still suffers from were corrected, and some design flourishes were added to augment the later lighthouses.  As a result, although all four lighthouses look similar and are all incredible feats of engineering, the original model, Cape Lookout, differs the most from the other four lighthouses and is the “plainest” architecturally.  (See this page for a comparison.)

A head keeper and two assistant keepers kept the Cape Lookout Lighthouse until the Coast Guard took over maintenance of the lighthouse in 1939.  A lightship was grounded at the end of the Cape Lookout in 1907, and assisted in lighting the area until 1933, when a storm washed the lightship ashore. The Cape Lookout lightship’s electric lighting system was salvaged and used to electrically power the Cape Lookout Lighthouse that same year.  This made Cape Lookout one of the last lighthouses to be powered by electricity. The lighthouse was fully automated in 1950, and the Fresnel lens was removed with dual airport beacons installed in its place in 1972.

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse would see two more war periods, both of which resulted in its light being dimmed. The first was a “brown-out” during World War I.  In the early World War II period, German U-boats took advantage of the fully lit Outer Banks lights and sunk approximately 80 peaceful merchant vessels in what they referred to as the “Second Happy Time”.  The US responded in part with a full blackout of the Outer Banks lighthouses that lasted through the remainder of World War II. 

Cape Lookout’s famous diamond day markings were added on April 17, 1873.  All four Outer Banks light towers had distinctive light signal patterns to guide ships through the banks at night, but because all four of the towers were built of red brick, they were difficult to tell apart by day.  The Lighthouse Board remedied this by having the Bodie Island, Cape Hatteras, and Cape Lookout towers painted with different black-and-white design schemes (Carrituck Beach was left its natural brick color after it was built in 1875). 

A local legend has it that Cape Hatteras was supposed to be painted with Cape Lookout’s diamonds, and that Cape Lookout was supposed to be painted with Cape Hatteras’ barber pole spirals.  But, the story goes, the painters got drunk and mixed up the two designs, so Cape Lookout accidentally got the diamond design instead.  However, the actual Lighthouse Board orders from the time reveal the following:  "Cape Hatteras tower will be painted in spiral bands, alternately black and white. Cape Lookout tower will be checkered, the checkers being painted alternately black and white. Body's Island tower is now painted black and white horizontal bands."   It was only after they were painted on that the “checkers” were interpreted as diamonds (like the diamond suit in a deck of playing cards). 

The diamonds caused another conflicting legend that still exists locally: that the Cape Lookout Shoals are the real Diamond Shoals.   This has been handed down locally through several generations, and apparently some of the locals still insist on calling the Cape Lookout Shoals the Diamond Shoals in this tradition.

Although the population around the Outer Banks was sparse at the beginning, by the time the new Cape Lookout Lighthouse was built, a large whaling and fishing community lived and worked on the eastern half of the Shackleford Banks.  The community collectively ran a small-time whaling operation in the spring when North Atlantic right whales were migrating northward; they fished for mullet and porpoises in the off-season.  This community had grown large enough that by the late 1800’s they numbered between 200 and 500.  Although they were large enough to count as a village, they had never given themselves a name. 

In 1886, a cargo ship named the Chrissie Wright was caught in a vicious storm and went aground at the Shackleford Banks village.  The sea was so rough and the temperature so cold (8 degrees Fahrenheit) that the entire crew had to remain on the ship and consequently froze to death.  The villagers tried to rescue the crew but were unable to because of the gale-force wind and waves.  This event spurred the U.S. Life-Saving Service, a maritime rescue service run by the Federal Government, to put a Life-Saving Station on Cape Lookout.  The station was built in the cusp of the “fishhook” on Cape Lookout about a mile south of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, and began operations in 1887. 

It was local Life-Saving Service Superintendent Joe Etheridge who finally gave the little village its name.  Because the village lived in the shadow of the diamond-spangled lighthouse, he suggested the village be named Diamond City.  The name met with instant support, and became the official name of the village in 1888.  Unfortunately, Diamond City would only exist about 15 more years, as three devastating storms would hit Diamond City in the late 1890’s, two in 1896, and one in 1899.  Around 1900, the locals in Diamond City began physically moving their homes to other locations in the nearby area, leaving the entire island deserted by 1903.

When Diamond City was at its height in the 1880’s and 1890’s, neighboring Core Banks also had a community of villagers. However, its population lagged behind that of Diamond City in that period.  After Diamond City was deserted, however, the area around the lighthouse and the Life-Saving Service picked up the slack through the 1900’s and the 1910’s.  It was the invention of the motorboat that caused another exodus of full-time residents from Core Banks in 1919 and 1920; from there out, the existing homes on Core Banks would be used as summer getaway residences.

In 1915, the Federal Government created the U.S. Coast Guard, which absorbed the duties of the Life-Saving Service.  The Cape Lookout Life-Saving Station buildings were in need of repair, so a new Coast Guard facility was built in the old Life-Saving Service’s location in 1916, and the original Life-Saving Service buildings were moved to another location.  This Coast Guard Station was in use until 1982; it is now used as an environmental research facility.

In 1966, the National Park Service acquired both the Shackleford Banks and the Core Banks, creating Cape Lookout National Seashore.  This national park was opened on July 4, 1976, as part of the Bicentennial Celebration.  The seashore is open to the public, but is only accessible by private boat or by ferry.  The lighthouse itself was open to the public only on special open house dates due to problematic and unsafe climbing and access conditions, but these issues have turned into safety threats and have become enough of a concern that the National Park Service suspended all public access to the inside of the lighthouse in 2008.  However, the assistant keeper’s quarters at the base of the lighthouse has been renovated into a visitors’ center and is accessible to the public.

For more information about visiting the Cape Lookout Lighthouse and Cape Lookout National Seashore, visit this page on the National Park Service’s official website.  For more detailed and insights on planning a visit to the lighthouse, visit this page from the Outer Banks Guidebook.  And finally, for a detailed look at the interior of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse and a better understanding of exactly why it is closed off to the public for now, visit this page and this page from the Outer Banks Guidebook.