Cape Lookout Lighthouse facts for kids

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is a tall, 163-foot lighthouse. You can find it on the southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. Its light flashes every 15 seconds. You can see it from 12 to 19 miles away at sea.

This lighthouse is special because it's one of the few that works during the day. It became fully automatic in 1950. The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is also the only one in the United States with a unique black and white checkered pattern. This pattern helps sailors tell it apart from other lighthouses. The middle of the black diamonds points north-south. The middle of the white diamonds points east-west. This helps show direction.

History of the Lighthouse

A view of Cape Lookout Lighthouse from a public beach in 2007.

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse you see today is actually the second one built here. It looks a lot like the Bodie Island Lighthouse (which has stripes) and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse (which is plain brick). The famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse has spiral stripes.

The very first lighthouse at Cape Lookout was finished in 1812. It cost over $20,000, which was a lot of money back then! It took eight years to build. This was the fourth lighthouse built in North Carolina. It was 96 feet tall and made of brick. It had wooden shingles painted with red and white stripes.

However, this first lighthouse wasn't tall enough. Its light couldn't reach far enough to warn ships about the dangerous "Lookout Shoals." These shoals were so tricky that sailors called them the "Horrible Headland."

The current lighthouse was finished and lit up on November 1, 1859. It cost $45,000 to build. This new lighthouse used a special "first-order Fresnel lens." This type of lens made the light much brighter and shine farther.

During the American Civil War, North Carolina joined the Confederacy in 1861. To stop Union forces from using the lights to navigate, all the lenses were removed from lighthouses along the coast.

In 1862, Union troops captured nearby Beaufort and Morehead City. By the end of 1863, a smaller lens was put into the Cape Lookout lighthouse. On April 2, 1864, a small group of Confederate soldiers tried to blow up the lighthouse. They didn't succeed in destroying it, but the explosion did ruin the lighthouse's oil supply. It also damaged the iron stairs inside. Since iron was hard to get during the war, the damaged stairs were replaced with wooden ones.

After the war, in 1865, the original lenses from North Carolina's lighthouses were found in Raleigh. They were sent back to the companies that made them for repairs. In 1867, the temporary wooden stairs were replaced with new iron ones. The original, brighter lens was put back in place.

In 1873, the lighthouse got its famous black and white checkerboard pattern. Some people think the patterns for Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras lighthouses were accidentally swapped. This is because the Cape Hatteras Light protects ships from "Diamond Shoals," so it seems like it should have the diamond pattern. But the patterns were just given out randomly. There's no proof they were switched. A town called Diamond City, North Carolina used to be on Shackleford Banks. It was named after the diamond pattern on the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.

The lighthouse is part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore. You can only get there by taking a private ferry. In the summer, you can visit the Cape Lookout Light Station Visitor Center. There's also a Keepers' Quarters Museum.

For a while, you couldn't climb the lighthouse. But it reopened for climbing on July 15, 2010. The climbing season usually runs from mid-May to mid-September each year. Visitors can climb the 207 steps to the very top!

However, on March 26, 2021, it was announced that the lighthouse would be closed for climbing again. During a safety check, officials found serious problems. These included issues with the flooring, rails, and cracks in the stairs. The National Park Service expects repairs to be finished by 2025. The Keepers Quarters Museum near the lighthouse is still open.

Gallery

A panorama view from the top of the lighthouse.