Cape Lookout Lighthouse is one-of-a-kind

Essentially, Portsmouth Island in the Ocracoke Inlet marks the beginning of the region that is known as North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks…all contained within the boundaries of Carteret County.

The region’s most distinctive landmark is Cape Lookout, a large “check mark” that can be seen from outer space. 

The shoals off Cape Lookout were known on early maps as Promontorium tremendum, which translates to “horrible headland.” Definitely a hazard to navigation, this treacherous area has contributed more than its fair share of shipwrecks to the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” 

A lighthouse at Cape Lookout was desperately needed, mariners said. The U.S. government responded by funding a 107-foot wooden lighthouse that was constructed in 1812. 

It was painted in red and white bands. Its light extended about 11 miles out to sea. Yet, sea captains complained that the “lighthouse was too short and the beacon unreliable.”

 

Many years passed before a replacement lighthouse was authorized. A new Cape Lookout Lighthouse became operational on Nov. 1, 1859, standing 163 feet tall. The brick tower didn’t get painted until 1873. 

The U.S. Lighthouse Society has the story, written by the late Candace Clifford, former historian for the organization. 

The “diagonal checkers” pattern was the brainchild of Army Maj. Peter Conover Hains, an engineer with the U.S. Lighthouse Board. His assignment was “to make the Cape Lookout tower distinguishable during the day from nearby coastal towers that were similar in construction.” 

Maj. Hains offered his solution Feb. 17, 1873, stating: “…Relative to painting Cape Lookout tower to better serve as a daymark, I have to say that this object may be accomplished in a very satisfactory manner by coloring it with black and white diagonal checkers as shown on the enclosed sketch, which represents the different views of that system, as it will appear from several points of the compass.”

 

“The black-and-white checkers for this tower…will render the system of coloring uniform; say, commencing at Body’s (Bodie) Island, black and white horizontal bands; then Hatteras, spiral bands; and Cape Lookout, diagonal checkers….” 

And so it was. The concept was approved by the Lighthouse Board and its chair Joseph Henry sent out a communique to mariners, alerting them that painting would commence in June 1873 to make lighthouses at Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout more visible during daylight hours. 

When constructed in 1872, the Bodie Island Lighthouse was painted with alternating horizontal bands, three white and two black. 

The design for the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was to paint it with four spiral bands, alternating black and white, with each band wrapping around the tower 1 and 1/2 times. 

The painting pattern for the Cape Lookout Lighthouse was “checkered, alternating black and white.” Six white diamonds face east-west, while four entire black diamonds and four “diamond halves” face north-south.

 

Hence, the daymark appears to change, depending upon which direction one is viewing it from, making the structure unlike any other lighthouse in the world. 

Dr. Kraig Anderson of Lighthousefriends.com commented that he finds it “fitting that one of the most strikingly distinctive lighthouses on the eastern seaboard” – Cape Lookout – has witnessed about everything from hurricanes and pirates to the Civil War and German U-boats. 

To paraphrase English poet Thomas Gray, Cape Lookout has “read a nation’s history in its eye,” Anderson wrote.

 

Accessing the lighthouse within Cape Lookout National Seashore takes some planning. You can’t just drive up to the base of the lighthouse and park. You have to take a boat to get there. Passenger ferries run from Beaufort and Harkers Island. 

It’s a trip worth taking.