If the weather had permitted, which it did not this weekend, today there at Bodie Island Lighthouse a celebration of 150 years signaling mariners they were off Oregon Inlet along the Outer Banks. That’s right, on October 1, 1872 the first order Fresnel light at the top of the tower was first lit.
It is a striking beautiful lighthouse, rising above Pamlico Sound and the surrounding marsh just to the north of Oregon Inlet. The black and white horizontal stripes are distinctive, first painted on the lighthouse in 1873 so in the daytime mariners could tell it from Cape Hatteras.
It looks a lot like the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse—except of course for the paint. It’s also 25’ shorter, but from ten miles or so offshore, the height difference is not apparent.
It looks a lot like the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse for a number of reasons. Like Hatteras it’s a brick lighthouse. Construction on it began a little more than six months after Hatteras was completed in December of 1870. There was a lot of left over material, so they used that.
Mostly, though, it looks like Hatteras because the same basic plan was used and the onsite construction supervisor was Dexter Stetson—the same construction supervisor for Hatteras, and the man who would go on to supervise Currituck Beach Lighthouse.
The Bodie Island Lighthouse is actually the third version of a lighthouse by Ocracoke Inlet.
The US Government had known or some time a lighthouse was needed on Bodie Island but it wasn’t until 1837 that funds were allocated and even then it took 10 years to finally have a lighthouse at that location. But that lighthouse, was poorly designed—Thomas Blount the local customs agent who would oversee the operation of the lighthouse, overrode the engineer’s recommendation for a foundation and instead built the tower on a base of bricks.
It soon began to list, and by 1859 had to be abandoned. But a new lighthouse, this one far better constructed was ready. That one only lasted until 1861 when retreating Confederate troops blew it up to prevent Union forces from using it as a lookout tower.
The first two lighthouses were south of Oregon Inlet. The Lighthouse Board who supervised lighthouses conclude Oregon Inlet was migrating south (it has been) and opted to build north of the inlet.
We’ll keep our Brindley Beach Vacations readers updated on when the official recognition of 150 years takes place.