Photographer captures an aerial view Oj 



By 1820, the Shell Castle Light 

 needed replacing, too, as it stood a mile 

 away from the channel it was supposed 

 to mark. By 1822, a new, more 

 effective lighthouse guarded Ocracoke 

 Inlet. The conical, whitewashed tower 

 stood 75 feet above the island. One 

 hundred seventy years later, the 

 Ocracoke Light is the oldest operating 

 lighthouse in the state. 



A hurricane ripped open a new 

 inlet in North Carolina in 1846. Two 

 years later, the first of three Bodie 

 Island lights was built south of Oregon 

 Inlet. The 56-foot marker filled a dark 

 gap between Cape Hatteras and Cape 



he Cape Lookout. 



Henry on the Chesapeake and enabled 

 mariners traveling south to round Cape 

 Hatteras without hitting the northward- 

 flowing Gulf Stream. 



Like many of the old lights, the 

 federal Lighthouse Service was 

 deemed ineffective in 1851 and 

 replaced by a Lighthouse Board. The 

 change brought quick advancements in 

 the quality of the country's lights. By 

 1856, modem Fresnel lenses topped 

 330 of the nation's 331 lighthouses. 

 Wick lamps replaced whale oil. And 

 lighthouse construction and reconstruc- 

 tion boomed. 



In 1854, the Cape Hatteras 



Lighthouse was raised to 150 feet to 

 boost its beam seaward. And two new 

 lighthouses went up at Cape Lookout 

 and Bodie Island in 1859. 



"People in North Carolina had 

 more power in Congress then," says 

 Richard Bauman, former chief of the 

 U.S. Office of Navigation, which 

 oversees federal lighthouses. In the 

 1840s and 1850s, "North Carolina 

 made out like a bandit. Then the Civil 

 War came and they ruined everything 

 they had worked for." 



Yankee troops set fire to a small 

 light at Pamlico Point Shoals in an 

 attempt to destroy it, but the Confeder- 



6 MAY/ JUNE 1993 



