Hunting Island sits roughly midway between the lighthouses at Charleston and Tybee Island, Georgia -- a 35-mile gap of dark coast where the Sea Islands fragment into a maze of tidal creeks and shifting sandbars. Congress appropriated $30,000 in 1854 to fill that gap, and the original brick lighthouse began operation on July 1, 1859, casting a revolving beam from its second-order Fresnel lens visible up to 17 nautical miles. For two years it guided vessels into Port Royal and St. Helena Sounds. Then the Civil War arrived. Confederate troops demolished the tower in 1861, and the coast went dark. It stayed dark for more than a decade, until Congress funded the replacement iron tower in 1872. Completed in June 1875, the new light resumed its watch over some of the most treacherous waters along the Southeast coast.

By the late 1880s, the Atlantic was winning. Hunting Island's shoreline had retreated so aggressively that by 1888, high tide reached within 35 feet of the keeper's dwelling. The Lighthouse Board made the decision everyone had anticipated: move the tower. Between March and September 1889, crews dismantled the entire lighthouse, transported the iron sections along a specially built tramway, and reassembled the structure one and a half miles inland at a cost of $51,000. The keeper's house and two outbuildings made the journey as well. It was a feat of logistics and engineering that validated the original design -- the bolted cast-iron plates came apart and went back together as intended. The light resumed operation on October 1, 1889, from its new position, and has stood there ever since.

The lighthouse operated for another 44 years before being decommissioned in 1933 as a federal cost-cutting measure. Five years later, South Carolina converted Hunting Island into a state park -- today the most visited state park in the system -- and the tower became its centerpiece. But salt air is patient, and cast iron is not immune. In 2003, rust had compromised several of the original stairs badly enough to close the tower for 18 months. The restoration added steel brace reinforcements that gleam silvery-gray against the black cast-iron originals, a visible record of the ongoing conversation between preservation and decay. By 2019, engineering studies found $3 million in additional repairs needed, including fixes for cracks and corrosion. The lighthouse closed again in early 2023, with plans to reopen after extensive restoration work.

When the tower is open, visitors climb 167 steps through the narrow cast-iron spiral to reach the observation deck at 132 feet above ground. The reward is one of the finest panoramic views on the South Carolina coast: the Atlantic stretching east to the horizon, the dark green canopy of maritime forest below, tidal marshes threading silver through the Sea Islands to the west, and on clear days, the distant skyline of Beaufort. The second-order Fresnel lens that once threw its beam across the water is gone -- replaced over the years and eventually removed -- but the lantern room at the top still feels like the bridge of a ship, ringed by glass and buffeted by wind. The lighthouse was briefly reactivated as a private navigation aid in 1995, a quiet acknowledgment that even in the age of GPS, some lights are worth keeping.