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Oak Island Lighthouse:
A New Lighthouse—And a Terrifying Climb
Oak Island Lighthouse Facts:
Year Built: 1958
Fourth Lighthouse in the region, Third Lighthouse to light the Frying Pan Shoals (see text for details)
Still Active: Yes
Activated: May 15, 1958
Latitude: 33.8928 Longitude: -78.0351
Day Markings: Black top, White middle, Gray bottom
Type Of Lamp: Eight airport beacon lighting fixtures, four on top and four on the bottom. The upper bank of lights has been decommissioned, and the lower bank contains 1000-watt incandescent bulbs.
Signal: Rotating flash that runs from 30 minutes before sunset to 30 minutes after sunrise.
Light Signal Sequence: Four flashes, followed by six seconds of darkness (sequence lasts ten seconds total).
Height Of Lighthouse: 148 feet
Height Of Lighthouse Above Sea Level: 169 feet
Focal Point Height Above Sea Level: 163 feet
Light Visibility: 19 to 24 nautical miles out to sea
Public Accessibility: Tours to the second level of the tower are held Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 am till 2 pm, starting the Wednesday before Memorial Day (late May) and ending Wednesday after Labor Day (early September). Tours to the top of the lighthouse are by appointment only, subject to the availability of volunteers, and must be scheduled at least two weeks in advance. Click here for more information about touring the lighthouse.
Official Website: http://www.oakislandlighthouse.org
Introduction
Built in the Cape Fear, North Carolina region in 1958, the Oak Island Lighthouse was the second to last lighthouse to be built in the United States. On average, the lighthouse can be seen 19 nautical miles out to sea, and up to 24 nautical miles out to sea at night. The Oak Island Lighthouse was built to warn ships of the Flying Pan Shoals, a long, thin underwater sandbar that extends to the southeast of Cape Fear like the handle of a frying pan, hence its name. Maps of shipwrecks off of Cape Fear make the Frying Pan Shoals look like a ship flypaper, with shipwrecks lining the entirety of the long underwater peninsula. How then did it take so long to build a lighthouse to cover this notorious ship graveyard?
The Oak Island Lighthouse and its grounds are cared for by a non-profit organization started by the town of Caswell Beach, North Carolina, in which the Oak Island Lighthouse resides. The climb to the top is dizzying enough that interested parties have to book a tour to the top in advance, and once they arrive they are given an opportunity to turn back before they begin the climb. What makes the climb to the top so terrifying?
Read on to find out the answers to both questions…
The Lighthouses That Preceded Oak Island
Oak Island Lighthouse was the last of four large lighthouses placed in the Cape Fear region. The very first lighthouse was built on neighboring Bald Head Island in 1795 to light the entry to the Cape Fear River; erosion caused it to be deactivated in 1813. Its replacement, “Old Baldy”, was built in 1817 and still stands. It too was intended to mark the entrance to the Cape Fear River, whose mouth is situated on the west side of the island. But concern over the Frying Pan Shoals, which are to the southeast of Bald Head Island, encouraged an attempt to redirect Old Baldy’s light into a warning beacon to cover the shoals. But because Old Baldy was on the opposite end of the island, its light was not adequate for this task. A lightship was placed at the far end of the Frying Pan Shoals instead, and served as the main lighting aid to mark the shoals for a number of years. Old Baldy then went back to its task of marking the entrance to the Cape Fear River.
In 1903, a skeleton-frame lighthouse named Cape Fear Lighthouse was finally built to better mark the Frying Pan Shoals. The Cape Fear Lighthouse stood on the southeast end of Bald Head Island at the point where the Frying Pan Shoals begin, and was in use until 1958, when it was replaced by the more powerful Oak Island Lighthouse and promptly demolished.
The Military Stations Around the Lighthouse
Oak Island lies to the west of Bald Head Island on the other side of the mouth of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. The land that the Oak Island Lighthouse stands on was originally part of the Fort Caswell Military Reservation. Fort Caswell was built in the 1820’s-1830’s to protect ships from pirate attacks, and became a Confederate outpost during the Civil War. After being abandoned for 30 years, Fort Caswell was renovated and put back into use from 1894 to 1926 as the United States began to get involved wi
th world affairs. (After) another decade of inactivity, the site would serve the military once more as an army base and submarine lookout post during World War II. (After) this long, active history, Fort Caswell was declared military surplus and sold in 1949 to private owners. The site now serves as a Baptist campground and retreat.
In 1891, a portion of the Fort Caswell Military Reservation was transferred from the War Department to the Treasury Department to build a Life-Saving Station; the station was built in 1899. When the station’s parent agency, the U.S. Life-Saving Service, merged with the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service to become the United States Coast Guard in 1915, the Life-Saving Station became U.S. Coast Guard Station #194, Station Oak Island.
The Making of the Oak Island Lighthouse
The Oak Island Lighthouse was one of a handful of lighthouses built by the U.S. Coast Guard, as the U.S. Lighthouse Service had built most of the lighthouses in the United States lighthouse system in the 1800’s. The Coast Guard had also absorbed the U.S. Lighthouse Service by 1939. Because of this, the Coast Guard chose the Oak Island Coast Guard Station as the spot for a new lighthouse to replace the Cape Fear Lighthouse. The Oak Island Lighthouse was to be built onsite at the Oak Island Coast Guard Station because it was to be powered by electricity, and electricity had not yet come to Bald Head Island, where the Cape Fear Lighthouse was located. Technology had progressed dramatically in the fifty years since the Cape Fear Lighthouse had been built, and the designers of the Oak Island Lighthouse took advantage of the new developments to design a lighthouse for the Frying Pan Shoals that would be stronger and brighter than any lighthouse in the area had ever been.
The winning bid on the construction of Oak Island Lighthouse was awarded to W.F. Brinkley and Son Construction in 1957. The lighthouse’s foundation consists of twenty-four 10” steel pipe pilings that were filled with concrete, driven 67 feet into ground, and capped with a 3-foot deep octagonal base. The lighthouse tower itself is an eight-inch thick tube of concrete with a height of 128 feet and a diameter of 17 feet, 8 ¾ inches. It was poured using a slip form that was moved up at the rate of one foot per hour as the concrete was poured. A concrete mixing plant was set up on site, and the concrete was poured 24 hours a day for seven days so that the concrete could be poured uniformly and therefore avoid future structural problems.
Many lighthouses in the past have received complaints from local residents for being eyesores because of drab colorings. Rather than worrying about having to repaint the Oak Island Lighthouse, the Coast Guard decided to color the concrete itself so that it would never have to be repainted. The first third of the structure was poured with gray Portland cement, the next third was white 
Portland cement with white quartz aggregate mixed in, and the next third was gray Portland cement with black paint mixed in. The result is the black, white, and gray color scheme that the Oak Island Lighthouse sports today.
With the main tower in place, the Coast Guard topped off the structure with an 11-foot-tall aluminum lantern housing on top, and fitted it with eight mercury vapor airport beacons (70 million candlepower). The lighthouse was then activated on May 15, 1958. Captain Charles Swan, who was the keeper of the Cape Fear Lighthouse for 30 years (over half of that lighthouse’s operative life), received the honor of initially throwing the switch to light the Oak Island Lighthouse for the first time. With the addition of a Texas Tower-style lighthouse built at the end of the Frying Pan Shoals around the same time, the lighting of the Frying Pan Shoals was finally complete.
Originally, the Oak Island Lighthouse was the second brightest lighthouse in the world and the brightest lighthouse in the United States. But upon changing the lights to four 1000-watt incandescent bulbs (2.5 million candlepower) in 1972, it lost that distinction, although it is still one of the brightest lights in the United States.
Under New Ownership
The Oak Island Lighthouse was operated by the U.S. Coast Guard, and was therefore off limits to the public, until GPS navigation began to take precedence over the existing lighthouse system. With lighthouses becoming obsolete, the Federal Government began turning over lighthouses in the United States’ lighthouse system to townships and other private organizations through the Federal Lands to Parks Program. The National Park Service and the U.S. General Services Administration approved the transfer of the lighthouse and some of the surrounding property to the Town of Caswell Beach, North Carolina. The transfer of the property was completed in a ceremony that took place on October 18, 2004. The Coast Guard has agreed to continue operating and maintaining the light itself as long as the Coast Guard Station is in that location, but the Town of Caswell Beach now owns and maintains the building and grounds.
A Hair-Raising Climb
Caswell Beach founded a non-profit organization called Friends of the Oak Island Lighthouse (FOIL) to assist with "the protection, preservation, maintenance and development" of the lighthouse and its surrounding area. When FOIL began looking after the Oak Island Lighthouse in 2004, they introduced guided tours of the lighthouse to the public for the first time ever. Unlike other lighthouses whose climb to the top consists of spiral staircases and landings, the Oak Island Lighthouse has a minimalistic switchback ladder configuration with steep ship ladders and narrow, plank-like landings. This makes for a dizzying, hair-raising climb that is not for the faint at heart (see this picture to see what we mean). For this reason, FOIL offers two levels of tours: one that allows visitors to climb to the second level and see the interior of the lighthouse, and a by-appointment-only climb to the top that must be booked in advance and which even allows would-be climbers a chance to turn back if fear of heights get the best of them!
Tours to the second level of the tower are held Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 am until 2 pm, starting the Wednesday before Memorial Day (late May) and ending Wednesday after Labor Day (early September). Tours to the top of the lighthouse must be booked at least two weeks in advance, and take place during this late May to early September time frame. Click here for more information about touring the lighthouse.
Visit http://www.oakislandlighthouse.org/ for more information.
Experience the Oak Island Lighthouse
9-minute documentary about Oak Island Lighthouse on UNC-TV
Friends of Oak Island Lighthhouse (FOIL) official website
Information on touring the Oak Island Lighthouse
Oak Island Lighthouse photo gallery
