Qualla: Cape Charles Lighthouse

Cape Charles Lighthouse: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Acroterion, CC BY-SA 4.0. The sea has eaten two lighthouses at Cape Charles and nearly took a third. The first tower, a 55-foot masonry stub completed in 1828, stood too short and too close to the surf. The 150-foot brick conical tower that replaced it in 1864 was raised a mile inland from the old stub, but by the 1890s the Atlantic was again at its base, devouring 37 feet of shoreline a year. The jetties failed. The bricks fell. By July 1927 the second tower toppled into the ocean. The third stands there still, on a remote marshy island that few will ever visit.

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Image: Acroterion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cape Charles Lighthouse: Tallest in Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skip willits, Public domain. The current Cape Charles Lighthouse is an octagonal cast-iron skeleton tower 191 feet tall, the tallest in Virginia and the second tallest in the United States. Eight massive legs surround a central iron tube; inside that tube, a spiral staircase of 216 treads climbs to the gener...

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Image: Skip willits | Public domain

Cape Charles Lighthouse: A Number to Remember

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eli Pousson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Lt. Frederick Mahan of the Lighthouse Board had a notion that every coast light should carry a numerical signature, like a fire bell stroking out the identity of a burning building. Cape Charles got a 4-5. The first-order Fresnel lens, installed in June 1895, made a complete revo...

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Image: Eli Pousson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cape Charles Lighthouse: The Second Tower's End

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Acroterion, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the new tower lit up in August 1895, the second Cape Charles light went dark. Its first-order lens was crated up and moved to the Hog Island Light, twenty miles north. The keeper's quarters emptied. The Army borrowed the abandoned tower during World War I as a coastal observ...

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Image: Acroterion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cape Charles Lighthouse: The Slow Going Dark

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fritz Geller-Grimm, CC BY-SA 2.5. The original Fresnel lens was retired in 1963 when the lighthouse was automated, and a brighter DCB-224 aerobeacon took its place. The keepers left. The lens itself now sits in the Mariners' Museum in Newport News. By the 1990s a Vega VRB-25 solar beacon was doing the work. On Ju...

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Image: Fritz Geller-Grimm | CC BY-SA 2.5