Bodie Island Lighthouse
by Dawn Gari
Title
Bodie Island Lighthouse
Artist
Dawn Gari
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
The brick lighthouse with alternating stripes of white and black that we see today is not the original lighthouse on Bodie Island. There were actually two lighthouses that came before it. Only eleven (11) years after the original Bodie Island Lighthouse was built, another tower was completed. The new lighthouse was eighty (80) feet tall with white-washed brick. It was equipped with a 3rd-order Fresnel lens, which flashed every ninety (90) seconds and could be seen for fifteen (15) miles. Two years after the lighthouse went into service, the Civil War started. As the Confederates lost hold on the Outer Banks, they retreated. To prevent the Union soldiers from using the lighthouse to their advantage, the Confederates blew it up. After the war a third lighthouse had to be built. This light house used many of the same construction techniques and left over material from the Hatteras lighthouse.
Popular folklore says that the island got its name because of the many bodies that were found around it, washed up from shipwrecks
Bodie Lighthouse stands 156 feet tall
The height of each stripe is 22 feet
It has 214 stairs to the lantern
The beacon is visible up to 19 miles
It currently has One 1000 watt lightbulb activated by photocell
The land for Bodie Lighthouse cost $150 in 1846
The total cost of construction was $140,000
The first keeper of Bodie Island Lighthouse was paid an annual salary of $400.
The tower still houses a 1st-order Fresnel lens
Uploaded
April 29th, 2014
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