The first Cape May lighthouse went up in 1823, when the young republic was still mapping its coastline. The second followed in 1847. Neither builder reckoned with the relentless erosion that reshapes this peninsula year by year. Their exact locations have been lost to the sea. The third and current tower, completed in 1859 under Raynolds's supervision, was sited further back from the shoreline. Its engineers solved the structural problem with an ingenious double-wall design: a cone-shaped outer wall, thick at the base and tapering toward the top, wrapped around a cylindrical inner wall that supports a cast-iron spiral staircase of 199 steps. The walls were built to withstand winds several times above hurricane force. The original first-order Fresnel lens, manufactured by Henry Lepaute in Paris, focused the light into a beam visible for miles across the dark Atlantic.

For nearly a century, lighthouse keepers and their families lived at the base of the tower, trimming wicks, polishing glass, and climbing those iron steps to tend the light. Automation came in 1946, and the keepers left. The Coast Guard maintained the beacon until 1992, when ownership transferred to the State of New Jersey. But the story might have ended there, the tower fading into quiet disrepair, had the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities not stepped in. MAC leased the structure and opened it to public climbers in May 1988. Since then, more than 2.5 million people have paid to ascend the spiral staircase and stand where the keepers once stood, looking out across Cape May City and Wildwood to the north, Cape May Point to the south, and on clear days, Cape Henlopen across the Delaware Bay to the west.

The lighthouse sits in Lower Township, but Cape May Point claims it as a symbol. The borough stamps the lighthouse image on its municipal vehicles, and the mayors of both municipalities have sparred over which community can rightfully call it their own. This small-town tug-of-war speaks to the power a landmark holds over local identity. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since November 12, 1973, the tower anchors Cape May Point State Park, surrounded by dunes, migrating shorebirds, and the concrete remains of Battery 223, a World War II harbor defense installation. Every October, the lighthouse participates in the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge, a statewide event that draws enthusiasts to climb every accessible lighthouse in the state.

The original Fresnel lens that once crowned the tower is a marvel of 19th-century optics. Augustin-Jean Fresnel's design used concentric rings of precisely angled glass prisms to capture light that would otherwise scatter in all directions and bend it into a single powerful beam. The Cape May lens, a first-order model with the largest diameter classification, was built by Henry Lepaute's workshop in Paris. It has since been removed from the tower and now resides in the Cape May County Courthouse, where visitors can examine its hand-ground glass up close. The tower itself remains an active aid to navigation, its modern optic still sweeping the junction of bay and ocean, warning vessels away from the shoals that have claimed ships and lighthouses alike.