A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways.
Cape Spear is a headland located on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland near St. John's in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. At a longitude of 52°37' W, it is the easternmost point in Canada and North America, excluding Greenland.
Cape Elizabeth Light is a lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, at the southwestern entrance to Casco Bay in Maine.
The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is a 163-foot-high lighthouse located on the southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. It flashes every 15 seconds and is visible at least 12 miles out to sea and up to 19 miles. It is one of the very few lighthouses that operate during the day. It became fully automated in 1950. The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is the only such structure in the United States to bear the checkered daymark, intended not only for differentiation between similar light towers, but also to show direction. The center of the black diamonds points in a north-south direction, while the center of the white diamonds points east-west.
Alcatraz Island Lighthouse is a lighthouse—the first one built on the U.S. West Coast—located on Alcatraz Island in California's San Francisco Bay. It is located at the southern end of the island near the entrance to the prison. The first light house on the island was completed in 1854, and served the bay during its time as a Citadel and military prison. It was replaced by a taller concrete tower built in 1909 to the south of the original one which was demolished after it was damaged due to earthquake in 1906. The automation of the lighthouse with a modern beacon took place in 1963, the year Alcatraz closed as the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. It is the oldest light station on the island with a modern beacon and is part of the museum on the island. Although when viewed from afar it easily looks the tallest structure on Alcatraz, it is actually shorter than the Alcatraz Water Tower, but as it lies on higher ground it looks much taller.
The Harbor of Refuge Light is a lighthouse built on the ocean end of the outer Delaware Breakwater at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, just off Cape Henlopen. It was built to function with the Delaware Breakwater East End Light in order to mark the National Harbor of Refuge.
Cape Mendocino Light was a navigation light at Cape Mendocino, California. The former lighthouse was relocated to Shelter Cove near Point Delgada, California in 1998, and the historic Fresnel lens to Ferndale, California, in 1948. An automated beacon operated for a number of years but was removed in May 2013.
Point Arena Light is a lighthouse in Mendocino County, California, United States, two miles (3 km) north of Point Arena, California. It is approximately 130 mi (210 km) north of San Francisco, in the Fort Point Group of lighthouses. The lighthouse features a small museum and gift shop. Guided tours of the light station as well as self-guided tours of the grounds are available daily.
Greens Ledge Lighthouse is a historic offshore lighthouse in the western Long Island Sound near Norwalk, Connecticut and Darien, Connecticut. It is one of 33 sparkplug lighthouses still in existence in the United States and remains an active aid to navigation. It sits in ten feet of water on the west end of Greens Ledge, a shallow underwater reef that runs a mile west of Sheffield Island and is roughly a mile south of the entrance to Five Mile River at Rowayton. Completed in 1902 by the Philadelphia Construction Company, the cast-iron structure is approximately 90 feet tall including roughly 15 feet of the submerged caisson. In 1933, more than 30,000 tons of rocks from the excavation of Radio City Music Hall were added to the riprap foundation. The light was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Greens Ledge Lighthouse on May 29, 1990.
Race Point Light is a historic lighthouse on Cape Cod, in Provincetown, Massachusetts; it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The original tower, first illuminated in 1816, was replaced in 1876 with the current 45-foot tall iron-plated tower and a new keeper's dwelling. The American Lighthouse Foundation operates the property and rents out two buildings for overnight stays. The actual light is maintained by the Coast Guard. The site is reached by walking about 45 minutes over sand; with a National Park Service Oversand Permit, a four-wheel-drive vehicle can be used.
Cape Charles Lighthouse is an octagonal cast iron skeleton tower lighthouse at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on Smith Island which was officially removed from service in 2019. It is the tallest lighthouse in Virginia and the second tallest in the United States. This particular tower is the third lighthouse at this location. The first lighthouse at Cape Charles was a 55-foot (17 m) masonry tower completed in 1828. It was quickly deemed inadequate for its important seacoast location due to its low height and poor visibility at sea. It was soon threatened by erosion so in 1864 it was replaced by a 150-foot (46 m) masonry tower built further inland. Located a little more than a mile southwest of the old tower and 600 feet from the shoreline, the impressive 150-foot-tall conical brick tower was similar in appearance to the 1857 Cape May Lighthouse, painted white and topped with a dark brown lantern room. In 1892, a twenty-five-foot red band was painted around the white tower's midsection, about sixty feet up from the base, to make it more visible during the day. By the 1890s, it too was threatened by beach erosion which jetties built to protect it failed to halt, and with the lighthouse now only 300 feet from the ocean and the shoreline eroding at a rate of 37 feet per year it was decided that a third lighthouse needed to be built three quarters of a mile inland.
Start Point lighthouse was built in 1836 to protect shipping off Start Point, Devon, England. Open to the public in summer months, it is owned and operated by Trinity House. It has been designated by English Heritage as a grade II listed building.
Point Clark Lighthouse is located on in a beach community, Point Clark, Ontario, near a point that protrudes into Lake Huron. Built between 1855 and 1859 under the instructions of the Board of Works, Canada West, it is one of the few on the Great Lakes to be made primarily from stone. It is one of the Imperial Towers, a group of six nearly identical towers built by contractor John Brown for the "Province of Canada" on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, all completed by 1859. The location for the Point Clark lighthouse was selected to warn sailors of the shoals (sandbars) 2 miles (3.2 km) off the Lake Huron coast. It is still functioning as an automated light. A restoration that eventually exceeded $2.3 million started in 2011 and the facility reopened for tourism in June 2015.
The history of lighthouses in Canada dates back to 1734.
Pigeon Point Light Station or Pigeon Point Lighthouse is a lighthouse built in 1871 to guide ships on the Pacific coast of California. It is the tallest lighthouse on the West Coast of the United States. It is still an active Coast Guard aid to navigation. Pigeon Point Light Station is located on the coastal highway, 5 miles (8 km) south of Pescadero, California, between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. The 115-foot (35 m), white masonry tower, resembles the typical New England structure.
The Cape North Lighthouse is a cylindrical lighthouse tower with a red and white checkerboard pattern that stood at Money Point, near Cape North, Cape Breton from 1908 to 1980. While originally installed at Cape Race, Newfoundland, this tower is most commonly referred to as the Cape North Lighthouse. It now stands landlocked at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
The Point Amour Lighthouse is a lighthouse located on Point Amour in southern Labrador, Canada. It is not far from L'Anse Amour, and was completed in 1857. It is the tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada, and the second tallest one in all of Canada, reaching a height of 109 feet (33m).
Cape Pine Light was built on Cape Pine, Newfoundland by the British architect and engineer Alexander Gordon in 1851.
The Pass A L'Outre Light is a defunct lighthouse in the Birdfoot Delta in Louisiana, United States, located near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Erected to mark the then-active entrance to the river, it was abandoned as that channel silted up. It has been in the path of several noteworthy hurricanes, and was heavily damaged. It is on the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List, and is critically in danger. The lighthouse is at the center of a nature preserve.
Mew Island Lighthouse is an active lighthouse within the Copeland Islands of County Down in Northern Ireland. The current 19th-century tower is the most recent in a series of lighthouses that have been built in the islands, which have helped to guide shipping around the archipelago and into Belfast Lough.
